Year In Review

9. MINORITY COUNSEL PROGRAM BUILDS RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CORPORATIONS AND RACIALLY AND ETHNICALLY DIVERSE LAWYERS

The American Bar Association Minority Counsel Program promotes diversity in the legal profession through education and by building relationships between corporations and lawyers who are racially and ethnically diverse. In fulfilling its mission, the program undertakes to facilitate contacts between corporate in-house counsel and racially and ethnically diverse lawyers for the specific purpose of developing mutually beneficial business relationships; provide opportunities for racially and ethnically diverse lawyers to establish and increase their representation in corporate and governmental entities; encourage majority firms to hire racially and ethnically diverse lawyers and assign significant legal projects to those lawyers; promote and enhance co-counsel arrangements and joint ventures between majority-owned and minority-owned firms; increase the visibility of minority counsel in public and private litigation; foster business opportunities for future generations of minority attorneys.

As most lawyers know, clients hire lawyers, not law firms. The Minority Counsel Program helps corporations get to know the minority lawyers who wish to represent them through CLE programs on cutting edge topics of law, roundtable discussions, workshops, and what has come to be viewed as the signature event of each MCP meeting: the Mystery Networking Event. Mystery Networking Events mix the corporate and law firm participants into small teams that compete against each other, and in the process, allow the corporate counsel to get to know the potential outside counsel in a way that facilitates opportunities for them to feel comfortable retaining the services of the outside counsel. Corporate counsel have the chance to see firsthand what it could be like to work with a particular lawyer: Does this lawyer have leadership abilities? Is the lawyer a team player? Does he or she have creativity? Persistence? Ingenuity? A sense of humor? Is this someone with whom my company would want to work? Click here to see some glimpses into creative networking MCP-style.

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