>> NONPROFIT
Colorado’s Center for Legal Inclusiveness Targets Attrition in Law and Poor Minority Representation
A
CCORDING TO THE American Bar
Association, the legal profession has the least representation of racial and ethnic diversity than all professional careers. Diverse attorney attrition is another troublesome issue in the legal industry. To combat these trends in law, the Center for Legal Inclusiveness (CLI) was founded by a group of Denver-area lawyers and professors in 2007. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the CLI is taking a focused approach on working to improve the retention and advancement of diverse attorneys by helping legal organizations create more inclusive workplaces. “Lawyers are the guardians of equity and justice in our society. For lawyers to be at the bottom of the list with respect to all other professions in terms of representation by racially and ethnically diverse numbers is embarrassing and honestly, quite shameful,” said Executive Director of the CLI Kathleen Nalty. “If everyone involved in the justice system isn’t diverse, and people coming to the courthouse obviously represent every aspect of society, then there’s a big disconnect there. I would hate for people to lose even more confidence in the legal profession because it doesn’t reflect society as a whole.” Racial and ethnic minorities comprise approximately one-third of the U.S. population, but only 11 percent of lawyers. Attrition rates are remarkably higher for minority attorneys, particularly female attorneys of color. The number of African-American and MexicanAmerican students graduating from law school has also remained the same for almost twenty years. Besides these shocking statistics, CLI highlights three reasons why diversity is important: improving the product for clients, enriching the work environment, and enhancing
20
PROFILES IN DIVERSITY JOURNAL
May/June 2012
the overall image of the legal profession. While the latter statistics and reasons show the need for diversity in law, demand for diversity has never been greater in the profession. According to the CLI, demand is being driven by the efforts of corporate legal counsel to put pressure on law firms to hire diverse attorneys. Over one hundred legal departments in Fortune 500 companies signed the 2004 Call to Action, which called on law firms to increase diversity or risk losing those corporations as clients. Call to Action even had direct implications for the formation of the CLI. “In 2004, that was a wake-up call for the legal profession, and it actually provided a catalyst for a group of folks in Colorado to really look at what needed to be done, what was the missing piece in the diversity discussion and the legal profession, and that’s how CLI got started,” said Nalty. Since its beginning CLI has been proactive at reaching out to legal professionals and attempting to make profound changes in a stalwart industry. Its most recent initiative, Step Up For Diversity: Take Action to Build An Inclusive Legal Profession, is a national grassroots campaign launched in October 2011. A web-based campaign targeting attorneys, Step Up For Diversity is aimed at getting corporate counsel, supervising attorneys, and all other attorneys working at the individual level to make real progress for diversity by making legal workplaces more inclusive. CLI created action items (which were born out of a focus group of attorneys who discussed hidden barriers for diverse and female attorneys) that attorneys can complete, like “taking a diverse attorney to coffee” and “creating opportunities … like corporate counsel inviting them to make presentations.”