Recruitment
Recruitment Tools
Certainly, our Firm employs standard recruitment mechanisms designed to increase diversity. We ensure a diverse pool of candidates for every vacancy, we attend and recruit from job fairs organized by local diverse bar associations, and we incorporate culturally diverse sites as venues for firm and recruiting events. We also actively support the activities of a multitude of diverse law student organizations to tangibly demonstrate our commitment to their members and specific law schools. However our recruitment efforts differ from the ordinary in several substantive ways.
First, the Firm utilizes the services of diverse search firms in recruiting attorneys for lateral hiring. Use of firms which are more connected with diverse attorney populations increases our likelihood of successfully recruiting women, gay and lesbian attorneys and people of color. The Diversity Committee recently discussed employing new quantitative/qualitative criteria indicating search firms’ past performance in diversity placements when selecting them. We are also committed to increasing our proportionate spending with minority and women owned search firms. Most recently, our law school outreach program has fostered genuine relationships between participating individual Locke Lord attorneys, their law school alma maters and current students.
In addition, the Firm not only attends job/networking fairs organized by local diverse bar associations and organizations, we are actively involved in organizing such events. We financially support diverse student organizations’ functions, and also participate directly by speaking and/or attending. Additionally, Locke Lord acted as the host firm for the 2006 Cook County Bar Association’s annual job fair and was an organizer of the 2007 fair. Our participation not only aided in diversifying our offices, but played a pivotal role in diversifying the legal profession in Chicago as a whole.
Recruitment Statistics
While diversity is about much more than numbers, certainly our 2006/2007 recruitment is impressive in this regard as well.
In 2006:
- 30% of Partners and Of Counsel hired were people of color
- 27% of all attorneys hired are people of color and 41% were women
- 6% of all attorneys hired identified as gay or lesbian
- 25% of all Associates hired were people of color
- 45% of all Associates hired were women
- 30% of lateral (non-first year) Associates hired were people of color
- 37% of lateral Associates hired were women
In 2007:
- 50% of new partners added were women
- Nearly 50% of all associates hired were women
- Nearly 55% of 2008 Chicago Summer Associate class were students of color
- Over 50% of Atlanta Associates hired were people of color
- Nearly 75% of Dallas Associates hired were women
- 20% of Houston Associates hired were people of color
- 50% of Los Angeles Associates hired were people of color
- 75% of Los Angeles Associates hired were women
Recruitment Accountability
The increased statistical diversity in newly recruited attorneys is due in part to our innovative recruitment tools, but also to the Firm’s structure. The hiring of first year attorneys is managed through the Firm’s Law School Recruiting Coordinating Committee (the “RC”). The RC is chaired by a partner who also serves on the National Diversity Committee (the “DC”), and both DC Co-Chairs serve on the RC. Other members of the local recruiting committees also serve on their local diversity committees. The two committees work closely together, along with the Directors of Human Resources, Recruiting and Lateral Hiring (who also serve on the DC), creating a “cross-training” network that considers diversity in every aspect of the hiring process. It is the explicit responsibility of the RC in conjunction with the Directors of Recruiting, to ensure that our pool of candidates for attorney positions is appropriately diverse.