Mentoring is key to diversity retention:
Lessons from the Diversity Summit

Law firms need to borrow strategies from the business world if they hope to sustain diversity, panelists told national leaders representing all segments of the legal community at “Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Next Steps?” a summit convened by ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr.

The summit featured a broad look at diversity—including lawyers with differences of race and ethnicity, gender, physical or mental disability and sexual orientation or gender identity. Participants also added culture, viewpoint and perspective to the diversity agenda.

“Just because you’re a good cook doesn’t make you a good restauranteur. Who in the world decided lawyers are competent to run a business? We don’t know how to manage the most important asset—human capital,” said John Lewis Jr., litigation managing counsel for The Coca-Cola Co, sharing the legal community’s particular challenges in enhancing diversity. Lawyers “don’t focus on management as a competency,” said Lewis, noting that developing talent is a skill and a science needing research and resources like any other business practice targeting success.

To bridge this gap, panelists at a break-out session offered practical tips for retaining diversity in the legal profession.

Federal government employment opportunities for new lawyers of diverse backgrounds lay ahead, despite the current recession, said Juanita Hernandez of the office of general counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Moderating the panel, Hernandez noted the federal government employs a lot of Baby Boomers who are approaching retirement, and said federal employment can offer minorities a path to marketable experience.

Mentoring was key for Holly J. Fujie, president of the State Bar of California and a litigator handling complex insurance cases, and José Roberto Juãrez, dean of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

For many lawyers from underrepresented segments of society, “law firms are foreign territory,” Fujie said. “I didn’t know any lawyers, zero, before I went to law school,” she said, adding that lawyers who are “ahead of the game need to make others feel comfortable—help them learn what it takes to be successful.”

Many minority lawyers also lack mentorship at home, highlighting the need for the legal community to step up its efforts to mentor a new generation. “There are so many political issues you picked up if your father was a lawyer but don’t understand if he wasn’t,” said Fujie, including the basic concept that “having business is power.”

Juãrez suggested most lawyers who interview law students as prospective hires don’t feel mentorship makes an appreciable difference for new associates. “Those who already are there think they got there by themselves.” But there is a “huge disconnect between what is well established in the business world and in the legal world we ignore.”

Corporations know and practice two kinds of mentorship, said Juãrez—instructional mentorship to enhance skills and developmental mentorship to offer emotional support.  “It helps the employee and it helps the corporation to inculcate the business culture in the employee. It is good business sense to mentor employees.”

Juãrez added financial incentives for law firm leaders to push retention of diverse lawyers: Profits per partner in diverse law firms are about $500,000 higher than in non-diverse firms, he said.

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© 2009 American Bar Association