Ralph Baxter
Chairman and CEO
Since its beginning in San Francisco in 1863, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP has grown into a global law firm, dedicated to providing seamless service to clients on their most challenging matters. Its Western presence includes offices in Los Angeles, Orange County, the Pacific Northwest, Sacramento, and Silicon Valley, with leading transactional and litigation practice areas ranging from products liability, securities litigation, and intellectual property, to structured finance, capital markets and energy and project finance.
(L to R): Renee D. Benjamin of California Portland Cement Co.; Joseph M. Malkin accepting award on behalf of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP; and Veta T. Richardson of MCCA
Together, these offices are home to a diverse group of more than 370 attorneys. Twenty-five percent of the lawyers in this region are minorities and 30 percent are women. Thirteen percent of partners are minorities and 15 percent are women. "We are extremely honored that MCCA® has recognized us for our commitment to diversity at Orrick and in the legal profession generally, and for the accomplishments that we have made toward both to date," says Orrick Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Baxter. "Although Orrick has made significant progress in recruiting and retaining diverse attorneys, we will continue to focus on the issue of diversity in the legal profession and on innovative and creative programs designed to enhance diversity throughout Orrick."
Diverse attorneys play key roles in managing and shaping the firm, as office leaders, committee chairs, practice group leaders, and members of the firm's Executive Committee.
Led by Neel Chatterjee, a partner in the Silicon Valley office who is Indian American, the firm helped create the Bay Area's first-ever Diversity Career Fair. The purpose of the fair was to introduce prominent law firms and government legal departments in the Bay Area to diverse second-year law students to enhance their opportunities for summer associate positions. Orrick's attorneys devoted endless hours to researching, organizing, and promoting the career fair. More than 250 students attended the event and 55 law firms and government entities participated. Orrick extended several summer employment opportunities to candidates that attended the 2005 career fair. Additionally, two of the summer interns were hired for the Fall 2007 year, as first-year associates.
Giving back to the community is a standard procedure at Orrick. In 2005, firm lawyers and staff dedicated more than 35,000 hours to community and pro bono efforts. To emphasize the importance of this work, Orrick applied all these hours to each lawyer's total billables.
In 2006, Orrick achieved a 100 percent rating in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index Annual Survey, which measures how equitably companies are treating their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) employees, consumers, and investors. Minority Law Journal named Orrick number 11 among the largest 255 law firms for minority lawyers in its Diversity Scorecard. The firm was ranked number 31 of 100 law firms for diversity, and was named as one of the 25 firms for Asian, Hispanic, and openly LGBT attorneys in Multicultural Law magazine's 2006 Survey of Top 100 Law Firms. It was sixth among all law firms in New York in American Lawyer's "Best Places to Work" associate job satisfaction survey and sixth among all firms nationally and globally. In 2005, Orrick was selected by the Charles Houston Bar Association, an affiliate of the National Bar Association, a membership that consists largely of African American lawyers, as the recipient of its 2005 Corporate Award.
From the November/December 2006 issue of Diversity & The Bar®