Lauri Shanahan
General Counsel
In creating three of the world’s best-known casual apparel brands, Gap Inc. has been helping people express their individual style for more than 30 years.
Led by General Counsel Lauri Shanahan, the company’s legal team is committed at all levels to maintaining an inclusive and supportive environment that embraces diversity in many forms, including gender, race, sexual orientation, and other cultural and lifestyle differences.
At Gap, there is an underlying and fundamental understanding that allows the company, as well as each individual within the legal team, to benefit directly from its diverse environment. As a result, individual team members take ownership of and hold themselves accountable for embedding diversity in all aspects of their work.
Department hiring managers are expected to proactively search for diverse candidates.
Prior to each hire, managers also have to demonstrate that they developed a diverse pool of qualified candidates. Once part of the team, all employees participate in setting and regularly evaluating individual performance objectives and development plans.
The company’s mentoring program and a supportive environment encourages open dialogue that has resulted in very low attrition rates.
Diversity is also a key factor in assessing and hiring outside counsel. Gap’s legal team makes a conscious effort to reach out to minority-owned firms and diverse attorneys in traditional firms.
The team’s commitment also extends to broad community involvement. Many department members are actively involved with non-profit organizations as board members, pro bono counsel, and community volunteers. These organizations include the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, the Family Service Agency of San Francisco, and Oasis for Girls.
The company as a whole is a regular corporate sponsor of organizations that specifically promote diversity and other social justice issues, including the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Equal Rights Advocates.
Shanahan believes that the outside public interest work performed by department members promotes the diversity mission by creating opportunities for the group to attract diverse individuals to the in-house team or as outside counsel, and also by creating an inclusive work environment.
The legal department’s diversity reflects the kind of open, inclusive work environment that the Gap strives to promote across the company.
The company employs more than 160,000 individuals, operates more than 3,000 stores in six countries, and does business with vendors in more than 50 countries.
From the November/December 2003 issue of Diversity & The Bar®