Over the past 10 to 15 years, the role of legal staffing firms and the promotion of diversity have simultaneously broadened and become more deep-rooted within the legal profession. Although one has not played a big or obvious role in the ongoing success of the other, most placement experts agree that, to an extent, search firms have been and continue to be successful in helping to promote diversity in law firms and corporate legal departments.
As executive director of Robert Half Legal, a legal staffing firm with locations in major markets across the United States and in Canada, Charles A. Volkert is a key player with a bird’s-eye view of the ever-changing industry. From the mid to late 1990s through today, Volkert notes, there has been a shift toward the use of project attorneys and paralegals by large legal firms and in-house counsel—both of which are very favorable trends for search firms. During that same time span, the Menlo Park, Ca.-based executive points out, his clients, like most of the big law firms and corporate legal departments, have become proactive in establishing diversity committees and initiatives, and in turn, the number of women and minorities entering the overall workforce has increased.
Creating that pool of minority candidates is a good first step toward promoting diversity in the legal profession. When David J. Maldonado, a Dallas-based senior vice president and national diversity coordinator at Special Counsel, Inc., joined the legal staffing unit of MPS Group, Inc., almost 12 years ago, he was perfectly poised to promote diversity in a staffing scenario. As a former Dallas litigator (most, but not all, legal placement experts are lawyers), a local and national bar leader, and a member of several minority bar groups, Maldonado possessed an intimate understanding of diversity in the legal profession. Just as important, he had personal access to a wide range of diverse candidates.
Currently, Maldonado oversees a team of liaisons specially selected to interact with a number of affinity bar groups, including the National Bar Association, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations. Recruiters need to go where the candidates are, says Maldonado, a co-liaison with the Hispanic association. According to him, it helps to attend and sponsor minority association events, get to know diverse candidates professionally and personally, and when possible assist them with professional development.
Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr., MCCA founder and now a managing partner of the legal staffing firm Messick & Johnson, agrees that in the staffing game, the best way to inject diversity into the equation is to create a wider network of diverse candidates to draw from. The way to do that is to consistently attend events that are more likely to draw a more diverse group of attorneys. “We go with the purpose of letting people there know that we’ve come to get to know them and to learn about their careers,” he says. “We want to develop those relationships over time.”
However, generating and nurturing a growing pool of engaged, diverse candidates is not always enough to effect real change. Roland A. Dumas, Ph.D., director of diversity and marketing at Major, Lindsey & Africa, LLC, an international legal search firm with 21 offices worldwide, explains, “There’s no rational reason why the number of diverse partners in a law firm should be proportionately lower than the number of minority physicians in a hospital, but it is.
“Observationally, you can walk through numerous law firms and not see an African American or Latino—our company’s recruiting force is aware of this, and because many of the recruiters are women, they’re also very sensitive to the glass ceiling in the industry,” says Dumas. “When a search company becomes large enough, it’s able to hire people like me to focus specifically on these issues, conduct research, and encourage effort in areas that will have results.”
While diligently scouting the minority attorney’s career path for roadblocks, Lloyd Johnson has come across some openings, too: “A number of law firms have become more willing to be flexible in how they evaluate candidates of color; they’re willing to consider what the person has achieved while practicing law as opposed to looking only at law school or undergraduate grades from 15 or 20 years ago.
“That’s the good news,” Johnson adds. “But unfortunately, in most cases, law firms continue to evaluate a candidate using the traditional criterion: law school transcripts. I don’t think firms and legal departments are working hard enough to focus on what it truly takes to be successful. It’s easier for them to do what they have been doing for the last 50 years. If you have a hundred lawyers and everyone has come through the same set of filters, why bother to adjust them? Things are changing slowly.”
According to Dumas, a longtime management consultant and an experimental psychologist by education, one would be hard pressed to find a company or law firm that discriminates openly, but some are so focused on credentials—school rank and GPA—that they are inherently discriminatory, often overlooking other qualifications that make a candidate right for the job. Recruiting consultants will rarely gain business by delivering ad hoc lectures on diversity to potential clients, concedes Dumas; promoting diversity is not done to increase sales, but to enable more informed decisions. It does pay to discuss the position in question with clients and to build up a profile of legal and interpersonal capabilities that a candidate needs to possess, and often the job description will evolve in a way that enables clients to see a larger prospective pool of candidates that includes more diversity than a credential-driven search will. It also pays in the long run, Dumas adds, for him to remain on the bully pulpit reminding buyers and sellers of legal talent that diversity issues are important for cultural and for business reasons.
Ron Jordan is the senior principal director of Carter-White & Shaw, LLC, an African American owned and operated diverse attorney legal search firm based in Chestertown, Md. Jordan’s firm specializes in recruiting diverse attorneys for law firms and corporate legal departments nationwide. He says, “I grow impatient with the request for ‘qualified minority attorneys’—all of my candidates, most of whom are African American, have graduated from law school, passed the bar, and have experience within their practice area. If they weren’t qualified, I wouldn’t be placing them.”
Jordan concurs with Dumas, Johnson, and other placement experts in his belief that despite advancements, promoting diversity in the legal profession remains a serious challenge. “There are certain practice areas in certain firms where you will never see a person of color, and while most every firm has its own diversity statement, they’re not always reflective of the reality,” he attests. “I want firms to be aware of the fact that the law business is changing, that they need to adjust to market conditions, and that market conditions include having attorneys of color doing jobs that they previously did not envision them doing. That’s an easy conversation for me, not a difficult subject to broach.”
Similarly, Special Counsel’s Maldonado is happy to sit down and talk with legal departments and law firms about how better to diversify their rosters, but he is quick to make clear that his job involves an additional challenge: educating candidates. “There are a lot of lawyers who are unaware of the process of working with search firms—many think of us as simply head hunters,” he says, “The truth is, over the last 15 years, many recruiters have begun striving to give candidates an extra arrow in their quiver when it comes to making choices about where they want to work. We’re trying our best to demystify the process.”
In addition, Major, Lindsey & Africa’s Dumas has identified myriad ways in which recruiters might find smarter and more diverse candidates to present to clients, as well as many internal junctures at which placement experts might assist in allaying the anxieties of diverse candidates. “Often, you have a candidate who can potentially knock the ball out of the park but doesn’t present well for an interview,” he explains. “You shouldn’t let that stop you.” According to Dumas, a good recruiter becomes involved with their candidates’ professional development, helping them present to their best advantage. The recruiter-candidate relationship is a career-long connection that ideally begins when candidates are still in law school and lasts until they have retired.
Generally, says Carter-White & Shaw’s Jordan, it is easier to sell a partner to a firm than to sell an associate. A more established attorney will generate revenue and bring new clients to the firm. It makes little difference to Jordan whether the attorney he places is a partner or associate as long as he is offering someone who has the potential to become a catalyst in igniting further diverse hires. Without exception, Jordan is opposed to supplying a firm with a token diverse candidate. “Do that,” he says, “and you’ll justifiably get a reputation for simply shuffling people around, and the diverse communities will not respect your services.” He also refuses to work with a firm that has not taken the time to have a diversity audit done, or in some way made visible the work of its extant minority attorneys.
“Of course I have a financial incentive, but that is secondary,” concludes Jordan. “Unless I view my job as a mission—getting diversity in the legal profession where it should be today—then all I’m doing is head hunting and placing bodies. For me, it’s pretty simple: the profession needs more attorneys of color at all levels, both associates and partners. Why not have them practice their craft at the best and biggest firms?”
Kathryn Holt Richardson, principal at HR Legal Search LLC in Austin, Texas, says, “Yes, to some extent recruiters simply react to the industry, it’s true. But in many respects, we definitely make an impact.” For example, she explains, “Sometimes a client will say, ‘Don’t exclude anyone, but we’d be thrilled to interview a few women.’ In this instance, a recruiter might facilitate diversity by really going out of her way to reach out to women, letting the candidates know why this client would be a good fit for them, and really arming herself with the information that will help to recruit women.”
Conversely, the impact that Richardson describes can work against diversity and search consultants, too. “If a recruiter has a bias against older candidates or women with children, or believes a particular person won’t fit with a client because people like him aren’t represented in the firm or corporate legal department,” says Richardson, “a recruiter can prevent change from taking place.”
A good recruiter is able to supply a minority candidate with a network that he or she might otherwise not have. “In a lot of cases, non-minority attorneys are better connected. Someone will put in a good word for them with the general counsel or hiring partner and that catapults them into getting an interview,” explains Anna Marie Armstrong, senior consultant with Mlegal Consulting, Inc., based in Palo Alto, Ca, with offices in San Francisco, Beijing, and Shanghai.
“It’s important for a recruiter to possess a wealth of information about the market, to have a pulse on what’s happening in-house and at firms, domestically and internationally,” says Armstrong. “Not only are you better able to place candidates, but also you get the best candidates to the table by impressing them with your information, by developing a relationship over time, so when they’re ready to make a move they’ll think of you. By doing your homework, you’re more effective and your practice as a recruiter is more rewarding and high level.”
For many corporations and law firms, the legal business increasingly continues to be both an around-the-clock and global endeavor. Consequently, legal staffing firms are becoming in many ways more vital and sophisticated than ever before. Robert Half Legal’s Volkert says, “I think well-respected staffing firms are increasingly meeting on a regular basis with law firms and corporate legal departments, and thinking about ways in which the industry is changing and what solutions are available to be able to provide the most highly skilled candidates to our clients. This is a value-added service specialized staffing firms can offer their clients.”
Dumas sums up his thoughts: “Ultimately, search firms are only a small cog in the diversity wheel. Placement experts can supply and promote diverse candidates as they emerge, but they cannot create them. In that respect, pipeline programs, the LSAT, and law schools are the real purveyors of change. In placing diverse candidates, legal search firms incrementally make an impact on the industry, but again, it won’t happen overnight and can’t happen by recruiting alone.”
Many placement experts agree that priming the pipeline is an integral factor in changing the face of the legal profession. They also believe that expanding the notion of what creates a successful attorney among leaders in the profession, and the distribution of work by law departments to more minority partners in majority-owned firms, are also essential elements for success. Until these changes take place, search firms will continue to help the profession make strides but will not be able to transform the face of the profession without internal process changes by large law firms and corporate clients. DB
Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.
From the July/August 2008 issue of Diversity & The Bar®