Laurin Mills,
Office Managing Partner
Nixon Peabody LLP is one of the largest multipractice law firms in the United States, with offices in 16 cities and approximately 700 attorneys collaborating across 25 major practice areas.
The firm’s Diversity Action Committee (DAC) champions its diversity efforts, cochaired by firm partners Kendal Tyre and Elizabeth D. Moore. “This is a tremendous achievement and recognizes our?firm’s commitment to and success in the diversity arena.” says Laurin Mills, Office Managing Partner of the Washington, DC office. “Diversity is part of our history, our success, and our future,” says Tyre.
In the firm’s mid-Atlantic offices, 28 percent of the associates are minorities and 51 percent are women. In the partner ranks, nearly 7 percent are minorities and 17 percent are women.
(L-R) Kendal Tyre, Co-Leader, Diversity Action Committee, Nixon Peabody; Liz Moore, Co-Leader, Diversity Action Committee, Nixon Peabody; and Simone Wu, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, XO Holdings, Inc.
The firm also actively recruits new diverse lawyers. DAC and the recruiting committee work with more than 30 schools to meet promising candidates. Since 2003, the firm has been a sponsor of the Washington Area Legal Recruitment Administrators’ annual summer associate diversity reception. These efforts have paid off handsomely: in the 2006 recruiting season, 33 percent of the law students hired for the summer associates class were minorities.
DAC and the firm also aggressively court women and minority attorneys at more senior levels. The firm’s lateral hiring manager works with minority-owned search firms and with firms whose staff are dedicated to finding diverse attorneys. Building on these efforts, they encourage attorneys throughout the firm to maintain active relationships with law school alumni associations to meet successful attorneys who may be a good fit for the firm.
DAC has launched a number of innovative practices providing “tool kits” for the firm’s group leaders and affinity groups that spell out best practices in a variety of areas, including equitable distribution of work assignments.
In 2007, Nixon Peabody was named one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune magazine for the second consecutive year, which included special recognition for diversity achievements. In addition, the firm has been recognized as a “Best Place to Work” by Washington Business Journal. The firm was given the highest rating (100%) by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality in corporate America (2006/2007), and it received a “Best Practice for Diversity” award from the New Hampshire Cultural Diversity Awareness Council (2006). The New York State Bar awarded Nixon Peabody the President’s Award for outstanding pro bono service, and the National Bar Association recognized the firm with the Presidential Award in 2004 for demonstrating a sustained commitment to diversity.
From the November/December 2007 issue of Diversity & The Bar®