For The Legal Profession, Diversity Dies Without Inclusion

“Plan to leave something behind so your name’ll live on / no matter what the game lives on.” — Nas

Last month, Laura Sherbin and Ripa Rashid wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review titled, Diversity Doesn’t Stick Without Inclusion. In 2014, Christine Riordan wrote a similarly themed article for HBR titled, Diversity Is Useless Without Inclusivity.

In their HBR article, Sherbin and Rashid wrote:

Numerous studies show that diversity alone doesn’t drive inclusion. In fact, without inclusion there’s often a diversity backlash. Our research on sponsorship and multicultural professionals, for example, shows that although 41% of senior-level African-Americans, 20% of senior-level Asians, and 18% of senior-level Hispanics feel obligated to sponsor employees of the same gender or ethnicity as themselves (for Caucasians the number is 7%), they hesitate to take action.

Sponsors of color, especially at the top, are hobbled by the perception of giving special treatment to protégés of color and the concern that protégés might not ‘make the grade.’

The result: Just 18% of Asians, 21% of African-Americans, and 25% of Hispanics step up to sponsorship (and 27% of Caucasians).

In Riordan’s HBR article, she highlighted four dynamics that frequently work against inclusiveness in many organizations:

1. People gravitate toward people like them;
2. Subtle biases persist and lead to exclusion;
3. Out-group employees sometimes try to conform;
4. Employees from the majority group put up resistance.

So how does the legal profession suffer from lack of inclusion?

As I have previously noted, in 2009, Black/African-American lawyers represented 1.71% of law firm partners. Today, Black/African-American lawyers represent 1.81% of partners.

Currently, Asian-Americans and Hispanics make up 3.13% and 2.31% of partners, respectively. Both groups have increased by less than 1% since 2009.

Clearly, the legal profession cannot engage in more of the same if we are to expect different results. Old diversity programs need to be disrupted. Current ways are not working.

So how can law firms become more inclusive?

Last July, Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev wrote the Harvard Business Review cover feature article titled, Why Diversity Programs Fail. In their remarkable diversity feature, Dobbin and Kalev shined a spotlight on what doesn’t work and what does.

Here is one example they highlighted of what doesn’t work:

Another reason is that about three-quarters of firms with training still follow the dated advice of the late diversity guru R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. ‘If diversity management is strategic to the organization,’ he used to say, diversity training must be mandatory, and management has to make it clear that ‘if you can’t deal with that, then we have to ask you to leave.’

But five years after instituting required training for managers, companies saw no improvement in the proportion of white women, black men, and Hispanics in management, and the share of black women actually decreased by 9%, on average, while the ranks of Asian-American men and women shrank by 4% to 5%. Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance—and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.

Here is one example they highlighted of what does work:

Corporate diversity task forces help promote social accountability. CEOs usually assemble these teams, inviting department heads to volunteer and including members of underrepresented groups. Every quarter or two, task forces look at diversity numbers for the whole company, for business units, and for departments to figure out what needs attention.

After investigating where the problems are—recruitment, career bottlenecks, and so on—task force members come up with solutions, which they then take back to their departments. They notice if their colleagues aren’t volunteering to mentor or showing up at recruitment events.

Accountability theory suggests that having a task force member in a department will cause managers in it to ask themselves, ‘Will this look right?’ when making hiring and promotion decisions.

How has your diversity figures changed in your law firm since 2009? Are you making diversity training mandatory? As Dobbin and Kalev pointed out, that could be counterproductive.

What type of diversity and inclusion goals do you have for 2020? Does your law firm have a diversity task force? As Dobbin and Kalev stressed, diversity task forces are critical to your success.

It is no secret, a majority of law firms are still struggling with inclusiveness. So if your firm is making remarkable progress in diversity or has innovative initiatives planned for inclusion, be sure to let us know!

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Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.