LGBT Diversity: Recruiters and Law Students
At the Lavender Law conference and career fair in San Diego in 2005, 62 recruiters came to network with members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) legal community. The following year in Washington, DC, the number of participating recruiters at Lavender Law rose to 126. Even though DC has more law firms than San Diego, D'Arcy Kemnitz, executive director of the National Lesbian and Gay Law -Association (NLGLA), the annual event's sponsor, says, "The rapid increase is amazing nevertheless."
"When we started our career fair in 2002 and 2003, the recruiters were made up of about two dozen non-governmental organizations and litigation impact shops like the ACLU and the National Center for Lesbian Rights," says Kemnitz. "Today, we don't even charge those groups anymore. Over the last five years, our recruiter demographic has shifted more to the private sector, and for the next couple of years, we have contracts written for venues that are already too small for us."
To be a recruiter at Lavender Law, a firm must include sexual orientation in its list of nondiscrimination terms. Kemnitz expects a third or more of the firms participating in this September's career fair in Chicago to include gender identity and gender expression in their list of terms.
Simply put, according to Kemnitz, all these changes show that firms need diversity in the current market, and they're willing to reach out to get it.
In March, George Washington University (GW) School of Law and the GW Chapter of Lambda Law invited openly LGBT attorneys from the DC area to become acquainted with GW's openly LGBT 1Ls and their allies at its First Annual Joint 1L Networking Reception. The event attracted many out partners and representatives from leading firms, non-profit organizations, and government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security.
By putting himself in the shoes of recruiters and partners on hiring committees, GW's senior law career counselor Eric Stern was inspired to organize this networking event. "While many firms and corporations are committed to LGBT diversity," says the openly gay lawyer, "it's not always so easy for them to find openly gay law students to come and work for them. The reception provides organizations with a great opportunity to build recognition among students, openly gay 1Ls in particular."
"Prior to the reception, I had no idea what the response was going to be," says Stern, "but from my work experience in LGBT politics, I anecdotally knew that one out of ten lawyers in DC is gay, so I thought that we might get a good turnout." In the end, more than 50 LGBT attorneys from 35 employers and 100 1Ls (of whom 30 were openly LGBT) came together on the GW campus and energetically mixed for three hours, prompting Stern to deem the event a phenomenal success.
"The firms took the event seriously, treating it as they would any other recruiting event," says Stern, "and consequently sending a strong message to the students that sexual orientation need not hold them back from exploring a diverse set of opportunities in the legal market, public and private."
–Eric Stern
Mary Wrightson, a recent GW Law School graduate and outgoing Lambda Law president, says, "My summer associate experience as a 2L was less than stellar. I asked all the right questions, but still ended up at a place where I wasn't comfortable. I can't emphasize enough the importance for law students to ask questions, talk to LGBT attorneys and professionals, and learn which firms truly are gay friendly. I think most of us prefer to work where we can be ourselves."
Today, more law students are openly gay than ever before, says GW's Stern. It is not unusual for members of Generation Y or the Millennials to have been out since high school, or to enter law school already in a committed same-sex relationship. Whether pursuing a summer associate or entry-level associate position, many fledgling LGBT attorneys are comfortable discussing what they need to be happy at work, and the notion of what is gay-friendly is ever changing. For some, a gay-friendly workplace may mean domestic-partner benefits and adoption assistance, while someone else may be more interested in knowing whether it would be possible to bring his boyfriend to the firm's holiday party without setting off a scandal.
Stern advises LGBT students, if they are ready, to come out on their résumés, typically by listing membership in an LGBT organization like Lambda Law. He suggests that students use their initial screening interview like everyone else—to impress the attorney or partner by focusing on things like academics, the skills board, the moot court journal—and to talk about LGBT issues further down the road. Fortunately, Stern added, there are resources that allow students to determine before going into their interviews whether a legal employer has an inclusive non-discrimination policy or offers domestic partnership benefits. This, Stern concludes, means that students in their initial screening interview don't need to ask questions about whether these protections and benefits are in place. NLGLA's Kemnitz, on the other hand, encourages students to come out as early in the interview process as possible. "Firms want—and I hear this all the time from recruiters—students to come out early," she says. "This gives the recruiter time to put the interviewee in contact with an out attorney at their firm, someone who can answer LGBT-related questions from firsthand experience."
Regardless of how and when LGBT law students choose to come out to prospective employers, Kemnitz and Stern both agree that the firms are there, increasingly receptive, and in many cases eager to court LGBT students proactively. In turn, the students are more and more willing to take the firms up on it. DB
Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.
From the July/August 2007 issue of Diversity & The Bar®