At Morgan Lewis, we appreciate that moving the needle on diversity requires purposeful effort, consistency, and communication. With more than 2,200 legal professionals working together across 30 offices on four continents, diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a core value embedded in our culture and the way we do business. From Firm Chair Jami McKeon to practice group leaders to office Managing Partners and members of the C-suite, Morgan Lewis leaders know that the selection of diverse partners to serve in senior leadership roles delivers the clearest possible message to all diverse lawyers that they have every opportunity for career development and advancement at Morgan Lewis.

Beginning with the creation of our D&I Committee (2003) and continuing with our first lawyer-of-color retreat (2006), through the appointment of our first woman Chair (2014), to the launch of ML Women and lawyer affinity networks for minorities, LGBT individuals, veterans, and returning-to-work associates (2015), to the roll-out of our Ramp Up and Remote Working programs (2016 and 2017), to achieving our Mansfield Certification (2018), Morgan Lewis’s philosophy is to “show, not tell” how we promote diversity and inclusion.

We celebrate diversity all year-long with events ranging from a Black History Month Q&A with partner Thurgood Marshall, Jr., son of the late US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, to a guided tour of the Art Museum of the Americas hosted by our Hispanic/Latino Lawyer Network, to an event supporting London’s Pride Parade hosted by our London office and LGBT legal network Out of America, to a Lunar New Year reception for Washington area law students hosted by our Asian-American/Asian Lawyer Network and Washington, DC recruiting committee. Finally, we have initiated a social media campaign, #WeAreMorganLewis, highlighting the unique experiences and viewpoints of our women and diverse lawyers.

Morgan Lewis recognizes the imperative to increase diversity in the pipeline leading to the legal profession and has made finding and nurturing diverse talent a top priority. Through the Morgan Lewis Foundation, we provide scholarships to diverse second- and third-year law students with excellent academics and serious financial need. With the launch of our innovative Mentor Circle pilot program and the introduction of a core competency model for associates, we are focused on providing our diverse talent with the tools necessary to succeed. At the partner level, we raise awareness of unconscious biases in the workplace through our mandatory Implicit Bias training program, while also developing programs that support an inclusive culture. Finally, we continually reinforce through words and actions that the path to success is wide open for our diverse lawyers.

We think this all adds up to doing some good in the world. But we also know this means better client service because diverse teams devise better solutions, and those solutions inform new innovations that deliver results. We are proud of the bold strides the firm has taken to elevate our diversity efforts in a way that wraps around our superior law practices and forms the fabric of a law firm that continually tops itself.