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Celebrating Champions Of Diversity And Inclusion In The Legal Profession

Congratulations -- and thanks -- to these inspiring leaders of the bar and change agents.

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Juan Arteaga of Crowell & Moring, 2019 Diversity Champion Award Winner. (Photo credit: Alycia Kravitz)

When it comes to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that there’s still so much work to be done. The good news is that the profession is now focused on that work — and leaders of the bar are taking it on.

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Dinner of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where the organization bestowed its Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award upon two such leaders: Juan Arteaga, a partner at Crowell & Moring, and Lisa Linsky, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery (and, full disclosure, a longtime friend of mine). It was a beautiful and inspiring event — and it also served as a fundraiser for the City Bar Fund, the Bar’s nonprofit arm that supports the legal profession in advancing social justice (including, but not limited to, diversity efforts).

After welcoming remarks by Deborah Martin Owens, Executive Director of Diversity and Inclusion at the City Bar, and Roger Juan Maldonado, President of the City Bar, the organization paid tribute to Justice Rosalyn Richter of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Department. Two members of the Committee to Enhance Diversity in the Profession, Kathy Hirata Chin of Crowell & Moring and Matthew Morningstar of Morgan Stanley, praised Justice Richter, outgoing co-chair of the Committee, for her tireless efforts to advance diversity in the profession. They noted that the past year has been a difficult one for Justice Richter — in September, she lost her wife, LGBTQ activist Janet Weinberg — but Justice Richter continued to work hard for the causes she cares about, including LGBTQ rights, diversifying the judiciary, and educating young people about law and the legal system.

Amid a standing ovation, Justice Richter took the stage. When she reached the podium, she joked about how long it took to make it up there in her walker — and thanked the City Bar for having a ramp leading up to the stage, without her even having to ask for it.

“I have the privilege of being an appellate judge, and so I now have the privilege of asking for things I was too scared to ask for as a young lawyer,” Justice Richter said. “We as a legal community need to stop having inaccessible events.”

Left to right: Benson Cohen of Sidley Austin, Co-Chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Champion Award Committee; Matthew Morningstar of Morgan Stanley, Incoming Co-Chair of the Enhance Diversity in the Profession Committee; Lisa Linsky of McDermott Will & Emery, 2019 Diversity Champion Award Winner; Kathy Chin of Crowell & Moring, Co-Chair of the Enhance Diversity in the Profession Committee; Juan Arteaga of Crowell & Moring, 2019 Diversity Champion Award Winner; Roger Juan Maldonado of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, President of the City Bar; Bret Parker, Executive Director of the City Bar; and Justice Rosalyn Richter of the First Department, Outgoing Co-Chair of the Enhance Diversity in the Profession Committee. (Photo credit: Alycia Kravitz)

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Following presentations about the City Bar’s various pipeline programs devoted to advancing diversity, the 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award was presented to — and enthusiastically accepted by — Juan Arteaga and Lisa Linsky. Both delivered heartfelt and eloquent remarks focused on different aspects of diversity and inclusion.

Arteaga focused on immigration. He has done extensive pro bono work in the field, representing immigrants, including battered women and their children, in immigration and deportation proceedings. He told the story of one such case.

In 2017, he was asked to help a family of undocumented immigrants from Colombia who are now living in the United States. The oldest son applied for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, while the family pursued asylum claims.

The son received notification that he needed to be fingerprinted as part of the DACA application process — and he was terrified, afraid that the fingerprinting could result in him being taken into custody and deported. After much discussion and deliberation with his family, the son decided to go in for the fingerprinting. Arteaga accompanied him on that day.

On the day of the appointment, the son hugged his father in a parking lot a few blocks away from the fingerprinting site (because his father was not joining his son for that appointment, and understandably so). The son was shaking with fear as he hugged his father and told him how much he loved him. Neither father nor son was certain that the son wouldn’t be taken into custody for eventual deportation when he went in for the fingerprinting.

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In the end, the son, accompanied by Juan Arteaga, had his fingerprints taken without incident. But the more Arteaga reflected on the episode, the more sad and angry he became. Immigrants shouldn’t have to live in such fear — and they shouldn’t have to endure the deplorable conditions and treatment at the border that have dominated the headlines as of late.

When it comes to immigration, Arteaga said, “We need to advocate for the values and principles that brought us here this evening. Our resolution of the immigration debate will determine the kind of nation we become.”

Lisa Linsky of McDermott Will & Emery, 2019 Diversity Champion Award Winner. (Photo credit: Alycia Kravitz)

In her acceptance speech, Lisa Linsky focused on LGBTQ rights — appropriately enough, given that the dinner took place just a few days before the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and the WorldPride celebration in New York. She talked about her work at McDermott as the first partner-in-charge of Firmwide Diversity and partner-in-charge of LGBT Diversity and Inclusion — which she viewed as of a piece with the work she did in the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, as a prosecutor focused on sex crimes and child abuse. The common thread: advocating for people whose voices were not being heard.

Linsky did point out the progress made on LGBTQ equality in recent years. She noted that the dinner was taking place on a momentous date: June 26, the anniversary of both United States v. Windsor (2013), in which the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), in which the Court ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality.

But she also urged everyone not to become complacent. Just as electing an African-American president didn’t mark the end of racism, the advent of marriage equality didn’t mark the end of discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Instead, Linsky said, “We must continuing naming — and resisting — the ways in which people continue to be excluded and oppressed.”

The evening concluded with remarks from Letitia “Tish” James, the 67th Attorney General of the State of New York, as well as the first African-American and first woman to be elected to the position. She began by invoking the now-infamous AP photograph of two migrants, a father and his young daughter, who drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to enter the United States.

“Caging individuals and separating families is not an immigration policy,” she said. “It is man’s inhumanity to man.”

James then turned to the Census case, Department of Commerce v. New York — which her office litigated, and which the Supreme Court was going to rule on the next day.

“Let’s hope the justices get it right,” she said. “Let’s hope they recognize the proposition that in this country, everyone should be counted.”

Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Dinner [New York City Bar Association]

DBL square headshotDavid Lat, the founding editor of Above the Law, is a writer, speaker, and legal recruiter at Lateral Link, where he is a managing director in the New York office. David’s book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel (2014), was described by the New York Times as “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” among legal elites. David previously worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.

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