MCCA Creates Important Tool for Member Corporations
In July, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) unveiled the Diversity Online Resource Information Service (DORIS), a long-awaited members’ only section of the association’s Web site. Initially conceived as a document repository, DORIS’s scope has been expanded to meet the evolving needs of MCCA’s members. DORIS includes extensive exclusive content, including a searchable document library and membership directory, as well as a discussion forum to facilitate communication and networking among members.
“We believe that our members need an enhanced resource to help them in promoting diversity internally and externally,”explains David Chu, MCCA’s Director of Membership and Development. “We’re interested to see what our members will make of this new service. To make it a successful and useful product, we need all of our members to contribute documents and their best practices. And their interaction with other members also will help DORIS develop into a resource that is even more useful over time.”
The cornerstone of the new benefit is the Diversity Best Practices Collection, a set of template documents, analytical articles,and “lessons learned” advice from the nation’s biggest corporate law departments on developing and maintaining an in-house corporate diversity programs. The collection provides guidance on a number of topics.
In addition, DORIS creates new and exciting communication channels for MCCA members, and allows members to interact more directly with the association’s staff. DORIS also provides access to enhanced versions of content found on the “public” side of the site, featuring greater connectivity and improved search functions to find documents that will aid in addressing diversity issues. And, perhaps most importantly, the new tool will help members develop and strengthen their professional network with other in-house attorneys.
MCCA expects that DORIS will play a key role in assisting its member corporations in advancing diversity by providing exclusive and enhanced content for members, as well as methods to expand communication among their in-house peers. For more information about DORIS and MCCA membership,or to contribute your corporation’s own best practices, please contact David Chu at davidchu@mcca.com or 202-739-5906. DB
Note
1 Both the white paper mentioned here and the underlying research, found in Sustaining Pathways to Diversity: The Next Steps in Understanding and Increasing Diversity & Inclusion in Large Law Firms (2009), are available at www.mcca.com under the Research tab.
From the September/October 2009 issue of Diversity & The Bar®