Corporate legal departments have been working on a wide assortment of diversity initiatives for more than a decade. Encouraged by experiences of domestic success and global growth, a few companies have ventured forth to the new frontier—to explore the conception and implementation of diversity programs in the global context. Increasingly, companies are hiring people in Europe and Asia, but diversity efforts continue to be largely U.S.-centric. It is not hard to understand why this is the case because driving diversity initiatives in the global arena has several distinct challenges. Fortunately, solutions are emerging.
Setting the Stage: Global Diversity Challenges
For many U.S. companies, international diversity is the next stepfor diversity programs, and, thus, few organizations and even fewer legal departments have formal, international diversity programs. The challenges vary in kind.
One challenge is that companies face a definition dilemma. Measuring diversity on an international scale is difficult because of disparate definitions of terminology worldwide. An American understanding of racial and gender-based diversity does not clearly translate in a world marked by a multitude of experiences and understandings of the term diversity.
Another obstacle is reconciling the competing objectives of unity and diversity. Many global legal teams seek to create a sense of unity throughout the organization, and as a result, may be hesitant to focus on team differences.
Finally, and perhaps the greatest challenge of all, some global legal teams consider themselves to have achieved diversity based upon their geographic dispersion and local representation within different geographic locations. One general counsel illustrated his perspective on this issue. He explained that his legal department is very diverse with attorneys in three geographic regions: France, Germany, and the United States. He asserted that outside the United States, his legal department is not focused on issues such as gender or race, and consequently, these issues are not considered in the hiring or development processes of the legal function.
Clearly, reasonable people disagree about if and how diversity initiatives should be applied in the global arena. Today, a few law departments have commenced efforts in this regard and lessons can be learned from their experiences.
Instituting a Program: Solutions Uncovered to Date
Perhaps the most basic learning emerging from early efforts is that departments should export best practices from domestic diversity initiatives. Many tools for understanding and addressing legal diversity within the United States can be applied to the subject of international legal diversity. Attributes of successful domestic programs— establishing ownership, identifying department needs and building consensus—serve as critical support structure for diversity programs in any location.
Departments working on these programs report three common goals or objectives for their international diversity initiatives. First, they are interested in promoting local talent through the ranks of the department. Second, they seek to transplant talent to locations where individuals can both learn and teach—leveraging diversity for competitive advantage. Third, most agree that they want to cultivate a global perspective throughout the function and ultimately the corporation.
One best practice that embraces many of these principles is the global attorney rotation program.
Spotlight Practice: Global Attorney Rotation Program
A number of corporate legal departments use attorney rotation programs as a foundation for developing or supporting international diversity programs. Participating attorneys are placed on global assignments that can last from several months to years. In many cases, the general counsel located at the company's headquarters is responsible for the organization and evaluation of the program. Through exposing the attorneys to different social settings, law departments seek to equip counsel with the necessary experiences and perspectives to develop effective diversity programs within their home offices.
For example, Mobil Corporation, under the leadership of Sam Gillespie (prior to the merger with Exxon), used an attorney rotation program to further its international diversity initiatives.
The rotation program connected the European, Asian- Pacific, African, South American, and North American regions. Each region had approximately one general counsel and 30 to 35 counsel, with the exception of the North American region, which had 75 attorneys. At least two or three lawyers from each regional office were in an outside posting at any given time. The department typically filled empty posts at non-U.S. offices with a common-law trained attorney from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere to achieve cross-company movement. At any one time, Mobil had as many as 16 to 18 lawyers on rotation.
In fact, one of Mobil's largest offices is located in Nigeria, where diversity issues tend to focus on ethnic and religious differences. For example, at one point the Nigerian general counsel was of the Muslim religion and a few department staff believed that more desirable assignments were being granted to other Muslim attorneys. Subsequently, the perception of bias based on ethnic and religious differences concerned department management. Accordingly, they addressed the issue by placing two of the top three Nigerian attorneys in Mobil's exchange program.
Of the top three attorneys, two were Muslim and one was of the Christian religion. The Christian attorney remained in Nigeria and the two Muslim lawyers were sent abroad. One was sent to Qatar and the other was sent to the United States.
At the end of an eighteen-month period, the lawyers abroad switched posts. Finally, at the end of a three-year period, the three attorneys shared their different experiences with each other and created a new diversity program for the Nigerian office. Subsequently, the department's management judged the program successful in advancing the department's diversity efforts across Mobil's international offices.
The global attorney rotation program has several benefits. It expands the perspectives of participants, and as a result, enhances individual and organizational development. It can be employed almost universally and allows separate offices to retain their independence.
Caveats to consider include two primary requirements: the company must be prepared to dedicate considerable resources to facilitate rotations, and staff must be willing to relocate.
In the final analysis, this practice is worthy of consideration by all corporations, with modifications as appropriate to different corporate cultures.
Caren Gordon is the senior director of the General Counsel Roundtable, which serves a membership of more than 300 senior legal executives drawn from the world's largest corporations. Members of the General Counsel Roundtable have unlimited access to a wide array of research services, including strategic research initiatives, short-answer research projects, member meetings and teleconferences—all focused on best practices for the general counsel and the corporate legal department. The Roundtable recently published an extensive white paper: From Thought to Action: Fostering Legal Department Diversity.
From the June 2002 issue of Diversity & The Bar®