Second article of a two-part series
The past decade has seen a revolution in acceptance for lesbians and gay men. Thousands of attorneys have "come out" in the workplace in myriad ways: putting their life partner's pictures on the desk, talking freely about weekend plans or visits to the in-laws. At the same time, many legal employers have realized that, by openly welcoming lesbians and gay men, they gain an edge both in wooing talent and clients.
In the first article of this two-part series, Diversity & the Bar examined the difficulties faced by gay and lesbian attorneys in the legal workplace. This second article asks: how can legal employers create a workplace that welcomes gay and lesbian employees, freeing them to do their very best work?
What do Gay and Lesbian Attorneys Seek?
When searching for jobs, many talented gay or lesbian attorneys—whether at the entry, mid-career, or top levels—check a firm's nondiscrimination and domestic partnership policies before applying. Younger attorneys, both gay and heterosexual, increasingly seek employers that are openly gay-friendly: lesbian and gay law students because they can't imagine having to be "closeted," and non-gay law students because they see support for lesbians and gay men as a signal that an employer is committed to making everyone feel welcome. Meanwhile, many lesbian or gay mid-career professionals are seeking friendlier employers, because they find it too tiring or demeaning to continue hiding.
Beyond these two basic signals, individual gay and lesbian attorneys also look for other clues that an employer is comfortable. Richard Parent, now senior counsel for Columbia Tristar Domestic Television, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, says that when he was in the job market, he would always "check the NALP printout for how many 'out' gay associates or partners were listed as being at the firms. If the firm said that statistics were not available, I counted that as bad: it was a signal they didn't want to deal with us."
Others look at a firm or corporation's welcome for diversity generally. "The advancement of women is sometimes a leading indicator, I believe, about a firm's willingness to recruit and promote gay and lesbian lawyers," explains San Francisco-based Keith Wetmore, senior partner and firm chairperson of Morrison & Foerster LLP, one of the world's largest law firms. When he was first looking for jobs in the early 1980s, Wetmore would look at how many women worked at a particular firm, especially in leadership positions, before deciding to apply. His reasoning: by our culture's standards, gay men are not standard-issue masculine. "A firm that's already moved past that classic masculine hierarchy, and can handle women leading them and playing important roles, is going to be a little more open to having a gay man in the mix. It breaks the locker-room ice."
Some gay and lesbian attorneys look for ethnic and racial diversity as another leading indicator. John Shope, a partner at Foley Hoag LLP in Boston, says he accepted a position there in 1990 "because the firm had a history of being the first in Boston to have Protestants, Catholics, and Jews all working together in a single partnership. My hope was that this ethic of tolerance would extend more broadly, and I was pleased that it in fact did." Similarly, when David Carlin was thinking about what to do after leaving the Clinton administration as assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "I wanted to be in a place where I could be out." In looking at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P. in Washington, D.C., Carlin was reassured by the fact that the firm housed both Vernon Jordan, a former civil rights activist, and "out" D.C. city councilor David Catania. "I knew right off the bat that diversity was going to be okay here." Akin, Gump has been nationally recognized for its diversity efforts.
In a similar way, gay-friendly policies signal to many non-gay attorneys that this will be a firm where they can thrive. "Some portion of the talent pool secretly feel they're not like everybody else," says Wetmore. "They see these policies as indicative of a flexible workplace that recognizes that people are not cookie-cutter images of each other."
And from the firm's point of view, every little bit helps in winning the talent war. "It's hard to get a competitive insurance and other benefits through their own employers, not through their partners'. Further, because lesbian and gay men have fewer children (and especially, fewer pregnancies) than heterosexuals, their insurance plans tend to cost less.
While costs are low, the rewards of including sexual orientation in nondiscrimination policies and of offering domestic partnership benefits are high. "The war for legal talent justifies the business case for nondiscrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits," says Todd Dickinson, currently partner and intellectual property practice co-chair at Howrey Simon Arnold & White.
According to Dickinson, whose prior positions include undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, one of the growth areas in intellectual property lies in biotechnology, for which attorneys need an in-depth scientific background, up to and including a Ph.D. "There's a growing but still limited number of such people," he says—which means the hiring competition is stiff. "If you rule out people who are gay and lesbian by not offering domestic partnership benefits, you're at a disadvantage. To be competitive in a tight talent market, you have to be affirmative." According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest civil rights organization advocating for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, more than 4,000 private employers—including one-third of the Fortune 500—offer same-sex spousal benefits. These companies include legal employers such as American Airlines Inc., BellSouth Corporation, ChevronTexaco, The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive Company, Compaq Computer Corporation, Dow Chemical, Federated Department Stores, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, IBM, Intel Corporation, Marriott International, Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., Pitney Bowes Inc., Shell Oil Company, United Airlines, Verizon Communications Inc., and Viacom Inc.
As Chuck Marlett, corporate secretary and associate general counsel of American Airlines Inc., the main operating subsidiary of AMR Corporation, explains, "We look for talent and employee expertise not only in the airline industry but in other industries. You can't afford to fall behind in that competitive marketplace."
Welcoming Gay and Lesbian Attorneys Once Hired: Leaders Set the Tone
Having the right policies in place is just a beginning. Equally important is setting a tone that allows gay and lesbian employees to relax, knowing that the policies are worth more than the paper they're written on. "It is a sign of good management for employers to reach out to those associates—whether they are of color or women or gay— who are at any risk of feeling disenfranchised by the core power structure of the firm," says Tony Varona, who has just joined the Pace Law School faculty as an associate professor after five years as HRC's general counsel and legal director.
"Reaching out can take whatever form that would be most natural for that employer. So if the employer is particularly gregarious, get to know the woman associate, the gay associate, the associate of color, just by talking to them. Mentoring relationships are absolutely key."
It's essential to make lesbian or gay attorneys feel that their life partners are just as acknowledged, welcomed, and included as heterosexual attorneys' spouses. Check the language of every invitation to a firm function to be sure that, whenever spouses are invited, so are partners, significant others, or guests. Inviting only spouses is just as exclusionary as inviting only wives.
But even when the language is right, gay and lesbian attorneys may still hesitate to bring their life partners to a function: no one wants to be the test case. "It's very difficult to break the cycle, because you can't all of a sudden populate the room with same-sex couples," says John L. Sullivan, senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary at the high-tech firm Imation, and an HRC board member. Sullivan urges law firm and corporate leaders to break the ice themselves by showing they not only welcome but also actively seek out the company of their gay and lesbian colleagues. For instance, Sullivan suggests that managing or other senior partners not just sponsor a table at the local HRC dinner but also attend with their own spouses— thereby giving the signal that leadership will back gay and lesbian employees when they bring their partners to firm events. If a summer associates program includes a weekly happy hour at various local bars, just as you would take into consideration the inclusion of minority-owned establishments, consider scheduling one of those happy hours at an upscale gay bar. Says Sullivan, "If you as a straight person feel uncomfortable going to a gay bar, think of the number of times the gay or lesbian employees have been asked to feel comfortable at a straight establishment. What better way to show your commitment to inclusion than to go outside your personal comfort zone so that others can be within theirs?"
There are many ways to show employees that the company's commitment to diversity is more than just lip service. Gwen Marcus, executive vice president of operations and general counsel of Showtime Networks Inc., a subsidiary of Viacom Inc., talks about how, in the early 1990s, she still believed that only those she'd personally told knew she was a lesbian. As Showtime was about to launch its diversity initiative, her CEO approached her, Marcus recounts. "He said, 'If this launch is going to have any meaning, I have to have my senior management right there with me. That means if I have a lesbian on my senior management team, it's time for her to come out.'" Startled to have been glimpsed in the infamous Lucite closet, Marcus took a big breath and said, "You got me; I'm on board."
Coming out was, of course, an enormous relief. "I didn't have to worry any more about what should I tell whom or how would I describe my weekend—all that needless psychic energy expended on ludicrous stuff!" says Marcus. "I have done a much better job since I've been able to be who I am." Perhaps more important, Marcus became a model: having an openly gay high-level executive made it clear that the organization was going to practice what it preached.
Other Viacom divisions had similar experiences. As of January 1, 1993, Viacom implemented across-the-board same-sex domestic partnership benefits, ensuring that same-sex partners are eligible for "all forms of insurance, medical, dental, life, long-term care, anything available to a heterosexual spouse," Marcus says. With the diversity policy's launch, employees came out like tulips in the spring. Today, the employee handbook is scrupulously comprehensive in acknowledging lesbian and gay life—noting, for instance, that all employees are entitled to days off with pay on "the occasion of their marriage or commitment ceremony."
Such leadership may seem more elusive in a law firm that's not a top-down corporation, but a loosely affiliated collection of strong-minded individuals, each in charge of his or her own turf. But it can be done. "Those firms that do have a good reputation [for welcoming gay and lesbian attorneys]," says Varona, "work hard to maintain it by disseminating that nondiscrimination policy to each and every supervising lawyer, partner, counsel, and senior associate, so everyone understands the firm does not judge on the basis of sexual orientation."
Some firm leaders show their support by trumpeting the community accomplishments of their gay and lesbian attorneys. "When I first got here, there wasn't much official awareness of gay and lesbian employees," says Lawrie Demorest, a partner in the products liability group of the Atlanta firm Alston & Bird LLP, "but now it's wide open." In 1998, when she told her managing partner she'd been elected to cochair the HRC board, "he was very warm and congratulatory." But a surprise was still to come. "Fifteen minutes later, I got a telephone call from our PR firm in New York, which he'd instructed to distribute a press release about it. In fact, every year the firm gives two pro bono awards to lawyers at our annual Christmas party. Two years ago, they gave one to me specifically for my work in the gay and lesbian community."
Wooing Clients: Gay-Friendliness as a Marketing Tool
Few law firms perform pro bono work solely from altruistic motives: most also hope to showcase their expertise to potential clients. Fortunately, working on gay and lesbian issues accomplishes precisely that. Many potential clients not only have well-developed diversity programs, but, in their RFPs, they require other firms to have such programs as well.
Mary Jo Hudson, an attorney at Arter & Hadden LLP's Columbus, Ohio office, talks about a heterosexual mentor who urged her to use her gay rights work to market herself. "He had the vision to see through prejudice and said: 'Whatever you do out in the community, make sure it works for you. Make your presence known; that's the way you market for new business.' He compared my political activities to the networking he did through his church and his children's soccer team."
When Varona was an associate at Mintz Levin, clients who heard about the firm's pro bono work on gay rights began praising that work of attorneys in the firm—and coming out, either as lesbian or gay themselves or as the parents of a lesbian daughter or gay son. "Gay associates and partners can build relationships with gay general counsel and gay leaders in industry," Varona adds, by making connections to the out lesbian or gay senior vice president, agency chief, or sole proprietor who's working everywhere from the Fortune 500 to the local startup. "If I were heading up a firm in this very diverse age of ours, I would feel the need to have the most diverse lawyer base possible so we would have connections to every sector of society."
That's what Keith Wetmore does. "I try very hard in all hiring decisions to make choices that expand the pool of people who will find us compelling rather than to shrink it. The tapestry of the American population is extraordinarily complex. Most Americans know someone gay or lesbian, often several, and are quite at ease with having someone gay as their counsel." While some potential clients wouldn't want a lesbian or gay attorney, "on the other hand, others wouldn't want to work with 'people who went to military schools, or people from the south, or people from the north.' Part of what you do is to have a diverse talent pool and try to figure out the right fit so that you can match the two up." The goal is to match for advantage, but never to deny opportunities because of race, gender, or sexual orientation — employers cannot afford to do that.
When Bad Things Happen in Good Places
No employer can control the behavior of every single employee on every single day. Thus, the gay-friendly law firm or corporation must be prepared to respond firmly when a bias incident occurs.
That's what happened at the Discovery Channel. In 1999, Doug Coblens came back from lunch to find that "somebody had circled the world 'fag' in a dictionary, with a big arrow written toward it, and put it on my desk. It was really, really upsetting." In his shock and distress, Coblens went to his general counsel, who immediately contacted the company's president. "She was just floored, just appalled that such a thing would happen here at Discovery." Within hours, the president had sent a strongly worded email to the entire company, saying that any kind of discrimination was intolerable, and that not only would the company terminate anyone caught expressing discriminatory bias, but it would take it upon itself to invoke the strongest kind of criminal sanctions as well. The email was worded vaguely enough that, while employees knew something had happened, Coblens' distress was kept private unless he chose to disclose the incident himself. "It was really spectacular," says Coblens. "It was dealt with in the most graceful and serious way."
See also:
The Gay-Friendly Workplace (Part One)
Recommendations for a Gay-Friendly Workplace
Gay and Lesbian Associations and Organizations
Gay and Lesbian Books
Gay and Lesbian Magazines
E.J. Graff is the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution and a contributing editor to The American Prospect and Out magazine.
From the September 2002 issue of Diversity & The Bar®