2013 July/Aug - Diversity & The Bar Magazine

® July/August 2013

RETURN OF THE

FARMER

NATIVE LAW EDUCATORS GROWING AGRICULTURE POLICY IN INDIAN COUNTRY

CHECK IT OFF

A Diversity Checklist Gets Things In Order PAGE 28

WHICH CAME FIRST? The Diverse Legal Department or the Diverse Board, AND Does It Matter?

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D I V E R S I T Y

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I N G R E D I E N T

At Perkins Coie, diversity is an essential ingredient that helps us create the best

solutions for our clients. We value and encourage diverse viewpoints and draw upon

them to resolve our clients’ business and legal challenges. Diversity adds perspective and creativity to what we do. It is a key ingredient to our success.

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The consultancy and think tank will support tribal food systems throughout the country.

July/August 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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There are 80 diversity actions on the list.

FEATURES 20 RETURN OF THE FARMER:

Growing Agriculture Policy in Indian Country Two Native American lawyers created the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law. Janie Hipp and Stacey Leeds are Oklahoma-raised educators who saw a void in legal education. They hope to steer young people back to the land that previous generations revered and develop legal practices that protect Native farm operators. BY LYDIA LUM

28 Check It Off How is encouraging diversity and inclusion like grocery shopping? At Shook, Hardy & Bacon, the firm has a diversity items list that associates can check off on the way out of the office. The checklist is an innovative way to think about diversity and makes it easy to keep in mind. BY BRIAN DABBS

34 Which Came First?

The Diverse Legal Department or the Diverse Board, AND Does It Matter?

The relationship between a company’s legal department and its board of directors is hard to parse. Do companies typically have an overall diversity mindset from the board of directors on down throughout the company? In some companies, the general counsel can advocate for a more diverse board. Jonathan Groner explores the relationship between the two. BY JONATHAN GRONER

VISIT WWW.MCCA.COM FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION ON OUR EVENTS, AWARDS, AND RESEARCH.

MCCA® Board Of Directors

COLUMNS 8 Notes from the President & CEO 10 Perseverance in Profile Highlighting the contributions and talents of attorneys with disabilities.

What the Disabled Want

BY DARRYL WEISS

14 Lawyer’s Lantern

Offering illuminating professional guidance for your career.

A Conversation with Teresa Sebastian, general counsel for Darden Restaurants

DEPARTMENTS 42 Association Focus Lavender Law

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

44 Diversity News Protecting Preference Claims

BY JENNIFER HOOVER

48 In Closing…

An Interview with Steve Zack

BY JOSHUA H . SHIELDS

50 Movers & Shakers

BY JOSHUA H . SHIELDS

16 Spotlighting Lesley Rosenthal

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

2013 STRATEGIC DIVERSITY SPONSORS

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Vernon G. Baker II Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Meritor, Inc. Michelle Banks Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer, Gap, Inc. Clarissa Cerda Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, LifeLock, Inc. A. B. Cruz III Former Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. Anthony K. Greene Director, Jamison Insurance Group Gary F. Kennedy Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer, American Airlines, Inc. Jean Lee Vice President & Assistant General Counsel, JPMorgan Chase Don H. Liu Senior Vice President, General Counsel, & Secretary, Xerox Corporation Hinton J. Lucas Vice President & Assistant General Counsel, DuPont Company Robbie E. B. Narcisse Vice President-Global Ethics & Business Practices, Pitney Bowes Inc. Advertising For advertising inquiries, contact Don Cooksey, Montrose Media Sales, at donald.cooksey@verizon.net.

MCCA® Membership Please visit our web site at www.mcca.com for membership and other information.

General Information and Address Changes Send your questions, complaints, and compliments to MCCA®, Editor, Diversity & the Bar®, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004. Address changes should be sent to MCCA’s Director of Membership and Development at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

Permissions and Reprints Reproduction of Diversity & the Bar in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The Copyright Act of 1976 prohibits the reproduction by photocopy machine or any other means of any portion of this issue, except with the permission of MCCA. To obtain permission, contact: Joshua H. Shields, Editor-in-Chief, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

Copyright Copyright® 2013 by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Diversity & the Bar is published six times a year and is distributed to supporters and subscribers, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

The information contained in this publication has been provided to the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA®) by a variety of independent sources. While MCCA makes every effort to present accurate and reliable information, MCCA does not endorse, approve, or certify such information, nor does MCCA

Samuel M. Reeves Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Walmart U.S. Legal Carlos Rincon Partner, Rincon Law Group, P.C. Thomas L. Sager Senior Vice President & General Counsel, DuPont Company Robin H. Sangston Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer, Cox Communications, Inc. Kenneth S. Siegel Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Mary E. Snapp Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation Lawrence P. Tu Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, Dell, Inc. Neil Wilcox General Counsel Chase Card Services, JP Morgan Chase Simone Wu Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer, Choice Hotels International, Inc.

guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy, or chronological sequence of any such information. Use of such information on the readers’ part is entirely voluntary and reliance upon it should be undertaken only upon independent review and due diligence. References herein to any commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, service mark, manufacturer, or otherwise shall not constitute or imply endorsement, preference, recommendation, or the favor of MCCA. MCCA (including its employees and agents) assumes no responsibility for consequences resulting from the use of the information herein, or in any respect for the content of such information, including (but not limited to) errors or omissions, the accuracy or reasonableness of factual or other data, including statistical or scientific assumptions, studies or conclusions, the defamatory nature of statements, ownership of copyright or other intellectual property rights, and the violation of property, privacy, or personal rights of others. MCCA is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims and denies liability for, damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance upon such information. No guarantees or warranties, including (but not limited to) any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular use or purpose, are made by MCCA with respect to such information.

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MCCA is a tax-exempt corporation organized in accordance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its tax ID number is 13-3920905.

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The Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) acknowledges the support of the following law departments whose financial contributions have helped to advance the goal of furthering diversity in the legal profession.

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3M Company AARP AT&T Accenture LLP AdvoServ AECOM AGCO Corporation Allstate Insurance Altria Group, Inc. American Airlines, Inc. American Express Company American Lawyer Media Aon Corporation Areas USA, Inc. Bank of America Bechtel Becton, Dickinson and Company Behr America Inc. Benistar Admin Services, Inc. Bluegrass Cellular Inc. Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation Booz Allen Hamilton BP America Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Capital One Financial Corporation Cargill Inc. Catalent Pharma Solutions CBIC Construction & Development, LLC Chevron Corporation Choice Hotels International, Inc. CIGNA Corporation CITGO Corporation Colgate-Palmolive Company Compass Group, The Americas Compassion Care Hospice Computer Science Corporation

ConAgra Foods, Inc. ConocoPhillips Constellation Energy Cox Communications Crawford & Company Darden Restaurants, Inc. Deere & Company Dell Inc. DHL America Diageo North America Inc. Dignity Health DiversityInc Media, L.L.C. Duke Energy DuPont DynCorp International Eaton Corporation Eli Lilly and Company Entergy Corporation Estée Lauder Companies Inc. Exelon Business Services Company Fannie Mae Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco Fickel Enterprises Inc. Flagstar Bank Freddie Mac Fujitec America, Inc. Gap Inc. General Electric Company General Mills Inc. GlaxoSmithKline Graduate Management Admission Council Genentech, Inc. Goldman Sachs & Co. Google Inc. Hewlett-Packard Company HJ Heinz Company H.J. Russell & Company Halliburton Honda of America MFG., Inc.

Honeywell International Huntington Ingalls Industries IBM Corporation Ingersoll-Rand PLC Intel Corporation International Paper Company Jamison Insurance Group JC Penney Company, Inc. JetBlue Airways Corporation Johnson & Johnson JPMorgan Chase Bank NA JM Family Enterprises, Inc. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. KeyCorp Kraft Foods Law School Admission Council (LSAC) Leo Burnett Company LexisNexis Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Lifelock, Inc. LifeVantage Corporation Liquidity Services, Inc. Macy’s, Inc. ManpowerGroup Marriott International, Inc. MassMutual Financial Group Medifast, Inc. MetLife Inc. Merck & Co., Inc. McDonald’s Corporation Microsoft Corporation MillerCoors Monsanto Company Morgan Stanley National Grid Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company Navistar, Inc.

Neighborhood Defender Service Newegg Inc. New York Life Insurance Company Northrop Grumman Corporation Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited Office Depot Pacific Gas and Electric Company Pepco Holdings, Inc. PepsiCo, Inc. Pfizer Inc. Pitney Bowes, Inc. PPG Industries, Inc. Porzio Life Sciences, LLC PRAXAIR, INC. PreCash Premier Media, Inc. Prudential Financial Quest Diagnostics Incorporated RBS Americas Reckitt Benckiser, Inc. Reed Elsevier, Inc. Rockwell Collins Rolls Royce North America Inc. Rosetta Stone Inc. Sara Lee Corporation Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. Sears Holding Company Sempra Energy ServiceMesh, Inc. Shell Oil Company Sodexo Sony Electronics, Inc. Southeastern Freight Lines, Inc. Southern California Edison Company

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Staples, Inc. Starbucks Coffee Company Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. Synopsys, Inc. Target Corporation Tessera North America, Inc. The Brookings Institution The Church Pension Fund The Clorox Company The Coca-Cola Company The Conference Board, Inc. The Dow Chemical Company The Juilliard School The Vanguard Group, Inc. The Walt Disney Company The Williams Companies, Inc. Tyson Foods Inc. UBS UnitedHealth Group United Parcel Service United Technologies Corporation U.S. Food Service, Inc. Verizon Communications Walmart Stores, Inc. WellPoint, Inc. Waste Management Wells Fargo & Company Wireless Generation Inc. Xerox Corporation XO Holdings, Inc. Xylem Inc. Yazaki North America Inc. Zenith Insurance Company

All Firm Affiliates Receive These Exceptional Benefits: • Use of MCCA Law Firm Affiliate Network’s logo for the firm’s business cards, ads, website, etc. (under license agreement).

marketed to MCCA member companies for outside counsel selection.

• Listed as a Firm Affiliate Network (FAN) member on the MCCA website—this will be regularly circulated to MCCA member companies who care about diversity for their information and reference.

• Access to the FAN Virtual Library of diversity resources (FAN directory, law firm best practices, sample documents, message board) and ability to contribute and share resources for inclusion in the FAN Virtual Library or Career Center.

• Ability to post bios and practice information on the firm’s diverse attorneys in an online directory that is

• Access to MCCA’s Career Center. Firms will be able to post jobs at low cost and review resumes at no cost.

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• Professional development information via Career Center and Group Mentoring opportunities via KAN-Do! Mentoring.

• Special firm affiliate e-newsletter containing trends, statistics, article links, and information on in-house counsel promotions.

• Two (2) MCCA Diversity Planning Toolkits (compendium of diversity research and best practice information compiled by MCCA).

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MCCA® Law Firm Affiliates MCCA® acknowledges the decision of the following law firms who have joined with MCCA to advance the goal of furthering diversity in the legal profession.

Alexander & Associates Archer & Greiner, P.C. Arrastia & Capote LLP** AXIOM Law Baldassare & Marra LLC** Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC Bressler, Amery & Ross PC Bricker & Eckler LLP Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione Brown Law Group** Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC Cavich, Familo & Durkin Co., LPA Christian & Small LLP Clifford Chance US LLP Cooley LLP Courington Kiefer & Sommers LLC Cozen O’Connor Crumbie Law Group, LLC** Davis & Gilbert LLP DeMahy Labrador & Drake, PA** Dickstein Shapiro LLP Duane Morris LLP Epstein, Becker & Green, PC Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP Fish & Richardson P.C. Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto Goldberg Segalla, LLP Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP** Griffith Sadler & Sharp, P.A.** Hamilton Miller & Birthisel LLP** Helms & Greene LLC Hinkley Allen & Snyder LLP Ice Miller LLP Infante Zumpano** Igbanugo Partners International Law Firm

Jeffrey Samel & Partners** Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, LLP Kenyon & Kenyon LLP Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP King Branson LLC Kirkland & Ellis LLP Kumagai Law Group PC Kumar, Prabhu, Patel & Banerjee** Lathrop & Gage LLP Leader & Berkon LLP Littler Mendelson P.C. Lim Ruger & Kim LLP** Loeb & Loeb LLP Martin & Martin, LLP** Maynard Cooper & Gale PC McGuireWoods LLP Messner & Reeves, LLC Miles & Stockbridge P.C. Miller Law Group** Montgomery, Barnett, Brown, Read, Hammond & Mintz LLP Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Nemeth Burwell, P.C.** Nicholson Law Group LLC** Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart P.C. Patton Boggs LLP Pepper Hamilton, LLP Peter Law Group** Phelps Dunbar LLP Pinckney, Harris & Weidinger LLC** Polsinelli PC Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, PC Quarles & Brady LLP Quintarios Prieto Wood & Boyer, P.A.** Rivero Mestre, LLP**

Rooney Rippie & Ratnaswamy, LLP Sanchez & Amador, LLP** Sanchez-Medina, Gonzalez, Quesada, Lage, Crespo, Gomez & Machado LLP** Saul Ewing LLP Schwartz Hannum PC** Shella, Harris and Aus, P.C.** Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert LLC Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, LLP Snell & Wilmer LLP Steptoe & Johnson LLP Stevens & Lee Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, P.C. Sughrue Mion PLLC Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP The Goldstein Environmental Law Firm P.A. Thompson Hine LLP Troutman Sanders LLP U.K. Vyas Law** Vinson & Elkins LLP Waas Campbell Rivera Johnson & Velasquez LLP Willis Law Group** Winston & Strawn LLP Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP Wong Fleming P.C.** Vinson & Elkins LLP Xupkus & Angell, P.C.** Zuber Lawler & Del Duca LLP

• Unlimited licenses to reprint articles/ information from Diversity & the Bar® and MCCA Research Reports for internal educational use and distribution within the firm.

• Subscriptions to MCCA’s invitation-only Connected online community (Connected is a social networking service offered by Lexis/Nexis via MCCA).

• Ability to sign up high potential diverse associates as KAN-Do! mentees.

** Minority or Women Owned Law Firm

• Bulk rate subscriptions* to Diversity & the Bar for unlimited number of firm’s attorneys.

* This item will require an additional payment at MCCA’s cost for printing and centralized shipping of a specified number of copies of the magazine to an office of the firm for the firm’s further internal distribution.

For more information, contact David Chu, MCCA’s Director of Membership & Development, at 202-739-5906 or davidchu@mcca.com.

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DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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Notes

From the President & CEO

A COMPROMISE FOR DIVERSITY? PREDICTABLY, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT’S RECENT DECISION IN THE WATERSHED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

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unleashed a flood of analysis from many quarters.

Much of the discussion focused, understandably, on the challenges to the educational pipeline and the emphasis on “strict scrutiny.” For now, the Supreme Court lets diversity stand but instructed the lower court to raise the bar for affirmative action in college admissions.

A more nuanced discussion, however, should be over the real-world, long-term impact on this country’s work force as it seeks to compete in a global environment. It is hard to argue that diversity in college admissions is without merit when you consider the increasing value being placed on this factor by corporations.

The starkest evidence of this is the shift in corporate support for affirmative action positions. Thirty-nine years ago, when the 1974 case of DeFunis v. Odegaard was heard by the Court, corporations did not file or support pro affirmative action amicus briefs. To the contrary, the National Association of Manufacturers actually filed an amicus brief supporting Marco DeFunis, the white student who sued the University of Washington School of Law. Today, corporations recognize the dynamic nature of a global marketplace. As a result Fortune 100 corporations note in their amicus brief in Fisher that the pursuit of diversity in higher education is not only a business but also an economic imperative. Further evidence of this shift in attitude can also be found in the increasing use of chief diversity officers within major corporations. A little over a decade ago, only three companies in the Fortune 500 had full-time chief diversity officer positions. Today, 90 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have such a

position or its equivalent and the majority of those report directly to the company’s CEO. These statistics run counter to the conventional wisdom that as the economy falters, companies should curtail the resources devoted to diversity and inclusion.

To the contrary, as companies seek greater opportunities in a broader, global setting, the ability to master cultural competencies and build diverse and inclusive workplaces becomes even more important. These companies understand this dynamic and they support diversity in the pipeline because it eventually helps strengthen the ability of their companies and this country to compete. This is the real importance of what the Court has done in Fisher and is the reason why MCCA will feature a plenary session devoted to Fisher and its aftermath at the Pathways to Diversity conference in New York on Sept 16, 2013. It should make for an interesting and useful discussion.

JOSEPH K. WEST

President & CEO MCCA_law

www.facebook.com/mcca.law

Publications Staff President & CEO Joseph K. West Founder and Publisher Emeritus Lloyd M. Johnson Jr. Editor-in-Chief Joshua H. Shields

DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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Publishing Consultants Bill Cox Toni Coleman Advertising Don Cooksey Design/Art Direction Quad/Graphics Creative Solutions

MCCA® Staff Jennifer Chen Mahzarine Chinoy David Chu Donna Crook Charles Hollins Jessica Martinez Aracely Muñoz Petrich Andrea Pimm

Contributing Writers Brian Dabbs Patrick Folliard Jonathan Groner Jennifer Hoover Lydia Lum Joshua H. Shields Darryl Weiss

MCCA.COM

Perseverance in Profile

WHAT DO PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY WANT? A View From a Person with a Disability

BY DARRYL WEISS

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To begin with, to not be referred to as disabled. Dictionary.com defines disabled as “persons who are crippled, injured, or incapacitated.” The definition brings to mind a person unable to perform a job that does not involve the simplest of tasks.

Disabled brings to mind a broken object, something that is unusable.

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more appropriate reference would be they are people with a disability.

The term can be used to describe everything from an ataxic gait (an unsteady, uncoordinated walk) to an individual with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). At one point laws (known as “ugly laws”) were introduced to target those who “exposed disease, maiming, deformity, or mutilation for the purpose of begging.”

Most of the ugly laws included the following wording: “Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object… shall not… expose himself or herself to public view” and were on the books as late as the 1970s.

An “ugly law” would compel an individual with a disability, such as a stroke survivor who spoke with loud garbled MCCA.COM

The term “handicapped” is derived from the image of a person standing on the corner with a cap in hand, begging for money. People with disabilities do not want to be recipients of charity. speech or an individual with Tourette’s or Down syndrome, amputees, or just anyone who might disturb the dining ambiance, to leave a restaurant if deemed a nuisance. A diner could legally ask the management of the restaurant to have them removed.

Fortunately society has moved past ugly laws. But unconscious bias still exists, particularly among people with disabilities. You might be interviewing candidates for a position within your company, and you see someone pull up and they are in a wheelchair or are missing a limb, or are blind or hard of hearing. You immediately start making judgments that the person cannot do the job because they have the disability. Ask yourself: What are the requirements for the job? Does it matter if the person is in a chair or has some sort of minor congenital condition if the job involves working at a desk? Do you know what compensations the person has made? Perhaps they record or write things down so they won’t forget them. Perhaps they can type one-handed, or just need to use a larger font to read. One of my MCCA.COM

disabilities is aphasia, a difficulty finding words. One of the best descriptions I have heard for aphasia is that someone breaks into your house and rearranges the furniture. You know it’s in there but you don’t know where. A friend of mine has a plaque that reads: ”Aphasia is a loss of language and not a loss of intellect.” I have to admit that I have used it to my advantage when the opposing counsel thought my brain was gone too.

When you meet an individual with a disability do you automatically assume it has affected everything and they must have a low IQ? While there are some individuals who have had devastating injuries to their body and/ or mind who will never recover fully, there are those for whom it has been a minor setback. One needs only to look at the para-athletes of the Paralympics to see what people have accomplished.

Imagine going out to dinner with an individual with a disability and their significant other. You ask the significant other, “So how’s Darryl feeling these days?” “What does Darryl think about XYZ?” Why don’t you

ask me? I am sitting right here. This scenario is played out in any number of locations. I have experienced it at home and at business meetings and I’m sure other people with disabilities can relate.

Another example of the “hidden person or hidden disability” may occur in public. An individual in a wheelchair is trying to make their way through a crowd and nobody notices them until they are bumped into or have their foot run over. Or you see someone getting out of a car parked in a disabled parking zone and they appear to have no outright disability.

Perhaps they have a heart condition and can’t walk very far or some other impediment that is not visible.

How do you react when meeting a person with a disability? The best way is to make reference to the person first. Say “a person with a disability” rather than “a disabled person.” The term “handicapped” is derived from the image of a person standing on the corner with a cap in hand, begging for money. People with disabilities do not want to be recipients of charity.

They want to participate equitably with the rest of the community. A disability is a functional limitation that interferes with a person’s ability to walk, hear, talk, or learn. Use “handicap” to describe a situation or barrier imposed by society, the environment, or oneself.

When offering assistance to a person with a visual impairment, allow the person to take your arm.

This will enable you to guide, rather than propel or lead the person. Use specific directions, such as left or right and step down or up.

When speaking about people with disabilities, emphasize achievements, abilities, and individual qualities. Portray them as they are in real life: as parents, employees, and business owners.

When talking to a person in a wheelchair for more than a few minutes, place yourself at eye level with that person.

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WORDS WITH DIGNITY USING “WORDS WITH DIGNITY” ENCOURAGES EQUALITY FOR EVERYONE

WORDS WITH DIGNITY

WORDS TO AVOID

Person with a disability

Crippled

Disabled person

Handicapped Invalid (Literally means: “not valid.”

Do not use this word.)

Person who has…

Victim

Person who experienced…

Afflicted by

Person with…

Afflicted with

Person who has cerebral palsy 12

Uses a wheelchair

Restricted Confined to a wheelchair Wheelchair bound (The chair enables mobility. Without the chair, the person is confined to bed.)

Non-disabled

Normal (Referring to non-disabled persons as “normal” insinuates that people with disabilities are abnormal.)

Deaf/Deaf mute

Deaf and dumb

Without speech Nonverbal Disabled since birth

Birth defect

Born with Emotional disorder

Crazy

Mental illness

Insane

Seizures

Fits

Developmental delay

Slow

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Do you have built-in biases of which you are not aware?

For more disability etiquette I refer to the Wheelchair Fencing Coaches Handbook published by and for the United States Fencing Association Coaches College. It contains sections on disability etiquette, words with dignity, and terminology.

Do you have built-in biases of which you are not aware? At a recent program on “Elimination of Bias” I was asked to mention a few biases I have faced as an attorney with a disability. When I was introduced the moderator purposely made a show out of mentioning the brain surgeries, strokes, and seizures I have had in the last few years. When handed the microphone I deliberately spoke with the stereotypical stroke survivor voice—loud and jumbled. The look of shock and horror on the attendees’ faces was almost comical. I then changed to my normal speaking voice and asked how many people had thought “Oh no, how do I react?” or “Oh no, do we have to listen to this?”

How would you react?

So what is it that people with a disability truly want? To be treated on equal footing. D&B In the last seven years Darryl Weiss has survived two brain surgeries for aneurysms, three strokes, and four seizures as well as a series of transient ischemic attacks that he refers to as “incidents.” He is a recently retired member of the U.S. wheelchair fencing team.

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Gala Tuesday

THE MCCA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Ursula M. Burns

Chairman and CEO Xerox Corporation

September 17, 2013 Join MCCA for an amazing evening honoring the nation’s foremost corporate and industry leaders at one unforgettable awards presentation, celebrating diversity and inclusion in the legal community.

Honorees Mid-Atlantic Region

Midwest Region

Northeast Region

Carl Quintanilla

South Region

Co-Anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” will host the 2013 Diversity Honors Gala

West Region

Sponsored by For more information you can contact: Jennifer Chen Vice President – External Relations 202-739-5902 or jenchen@mcca.com

To learn more visit www.mcca.com/gala

Lawyer’s Lantern

TERESA SEBASTIAN

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Teresa Sebastian is the general counsel of Darden Restaurants, Inc. which includes Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and other familiar full-service dining establishments.

Since 1996, Darden has had a Dispute Resolution Process (“DRP”) to fairly and effectively resolve employment claims between the company and its employees. The DRP is a multistep process that includes mediation and arbitration as the final two steps. As an avid supporter of dispute resolution, Sebastian is committed to ensuring Darden’s program remains fair and accurately reflects Darden’s growing, diverse population. Diversity & the Bar spoke with Darden’s GC to see what they are doing to increase diversity among the mediators and arbitrators who participate in the Dispute Resolution Process.

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What is your perception of the degree of diversity within the ranks of American Mediators and Arbitrators (aka neutrals)?

Statistics on diversity can often be very difficult to obtain and rarely shared by independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service organizations. By some estimates, fewer than two percent of full-time neutrals in the United States are people of color. Certainly, Darden’s experience indicates a woeful underrepresentation of minority neutrals available to service our mediation and arbitration panel needs. Darden has a very diverse workforce, and any employee’s participation in our DRP program must be consistent with this diversity. We want the ranks of neutrals available for selection to mirror the diversity of our workforce. However, sourcing people of color as neutrals has been challenging and has not produced satisfactory results for companies such as Darden that wish to utilize the services of racially diverse neutrals.

Why is it important to Darden to see an increase in diversity among mediators and arbitrators?

One of Darden’s core values is to embrace and celebrate diversity in all we do. We embrace and celebrate the diversity of our guests, employees, suppliers, and the communities we serve. We are proud of these values and believe that they give us a competitive advantage in the marketplace. So it should not be a surprise that we also embrace and celebrate diversity in the treatment of our employees and in the resolution of any disputes which may arise in the employment context. We have a successful DRP that our employees access with the MCCA.COM

goal of resolving work-related problems, concerns, and disputes in a prompt, fair, and efficient way that protects the legal rights of both the employee and Darden. For our DRP program to thrive as it is intended, it is essential that our employees continue to have confidence that their issues will be understood and that they will be treated fairly and respectfully during the resolution process. One of the central factors in achieving this outcome is making certain the panel of neutrals from which employees may choose is richly diverse and reflective of their shared values. This in turn strengthens the ability to quickly and successfully resolve disputes.

Why has there been a shift to mediation or arbitration?

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

For Darden, it is about the entire ADR process. We want the dispute to be resolved in a way that preserves employee engagement. So, the most critical steps for Darden are the first three—open door, peer review, and mediation. These steps foster communication and are in keeping with our commitment to integrity and fairness.

They’re also a critical piece to early and successful resolution of disputes that are most likely to lead to continued employee engagement. In general, I think most chief legal officers would say that mediation and arbitration are easier on the budget—less costly than litigation. There are also avoided soft costs with ADR. It is less time consuming on the in-house lawyers and our business clients, it feels less contentious for the parties involved, and it gives you a definitive resolution that allows people to move forward—one way or the other. The biggest disadvantage with ADR is the challenge with accessing a diverse pool of neutrals.

What is Darden doing to shift the demographics of neutrals or arbitrators?

In 2007, Darden, in partnership with Capital University, formed MCCA.COM

the Conflict Resolution Diversity Initiative (CRDI) to create a process focused on the selection of minorities to serve as neutrals in dispute resolution matters. The first program of its kind in the country, CRDI resulted in expanded opportunities for people of color to serve as neutrals in national corporate dispute resolution programs.

The results of the CRDI pilot program, which lasted fourteen months, indicated that cases administered through CRDI, compared to those administered through other national services during the same time period, were settled with greater frequency, more quickly, and for less cost. Today, CRDI has evolved into the Neutrals Diversity Alliance (NDA) with the goal of expanding the pilot.

Will it have an effect on the overall market or would it be limited to neutrals involved in Darden’s work?

NDA is the next phase of the successful CRDI pilot. CRDI sought to increase minority participation as neutrals in the ADR process by offering intentionally diverse panels of mediators. NDA will build on the success of the CRDI and expand the program nationally by offering it to other Fortune 500 companies and growing the diverse panels of neutrals.

NDA’s mission is to: • Provide a more diverse pool of qualified neutrals to facilitate the resolution of labor and employment disputes involving employees/companies.

• Serve as a national model for increasing diversity in ADR. • Increase opportunities for minorities to serve as neutrals in labor and employment ADR matters.

• Create an alternative third party facilitator which can be used by employers to ensure minority neutrals have a greater likelihood for selection on cases.

• Educate companies about the need to proactively consider diverse neutrals in the administration of

their ADR programs.

I believe that NDA will be a game changer and as NDA moves into the next phase of growth and introduces its program generally to corporate America, Darden will continue with its commitment to sponsor and support this important initiative.

What advice or suggestions do you have for companies that are considering diversifying their arbitrator pool?

First, diversity must be a valued part of the culture and supported by the organization as a whole. Having a process (i.e., open door, reviews, mediation, ombusperson, etc.) that allows for opportunities to resolve issues before escalating to third party fact-finders (judges and juries) facilitates the ability to ensure employees feel heard and that they have been treated fairly and respectfully. Despite whatever process is used to resolve disputes, it’s important the participants (i.e., neutrals) reflect the values and cultures of the employees who utilize the program.

Companies must be intentional in seeking diverse neutrals. They must actively move out of the comfort zone of using the same avenues for obtaining or sourcing neutrals. There should be a willingness to try new methods to source minority neutrals by availing themselves of the services of an organization such as NDA. I believe that if Fortune 500 companies sincerely embrace and support NDA-style diversity initiatives, they are likely to not only have the satisfaction of knowing they have done the right thing but also to have fostered a faster, more fair, and more costeffective dispute resolution program for their companies that will truly be more trusted, embraced, and appreciated by their employees. D&B Teresa Sebastian spoke with Diversity & the Bar Editor-in-Chief Joshua Shields for this interview.

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Spotlighting THE LINCOLN CENTER LEGAL TEAM: SARA E. CHANG, JENNIFER E. BENJAMIN, LESLEY F. ROSENTHAL, AND MICHELLE MILLARD

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THE ART OF NONPROFIT Lesley Rosenthal

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

Lesley Rosenthal is an accomplished violinist. She is also vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

“Our associate general counsel Sara Chang is a pianist, and other members of our four-person, diverse legal team are passionate lovers of the arts too,” she continues. “And no, we don’t audition people on the way in, but it helps.”

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L

ocated on 16 acres on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. (an enterprise with an annual operating budget that exceeds $100 million) is among New York City’s most beloved nonprofits.

Each year, in fulfillment of its cultural and education mission, the center presents over 3,500 performances with programmatic commitments that reach far and wide throughout the world of the arts. Its popular song, dance, and theater series include Mostly Mozart, the Great American Songbook, Lincoln Center Festival, and the PBS television program Live From Lincoln Center. Also housed in the center’s sprawling complex are other prestigious resident organizations: the Metropolitan Opera, The Juilliard School, and the New York City Ballet.

In addition to overseeing the Lincoln Center’s legal affairs and providing ongoing support and advice to the board of directors, Rosenthal was initially hired to frame the legal context for the high-profile redevelopment of the legendary center’s campus. Changes included stripping out a block of opaque marble at eye level the length MCCA.COM

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of a whole city block on 65th Street and replacing it with glass, allowing passersby to see what’s happening within the center’s hallowed halls. “The new architecture is very inclusive,” she says. “Now you can look in and see dance and music rehearsals. It’s as if Lincoln Center has been turned inside out. Being a part of [architect] Liz Diller’s plans for making a mark on the landscape of New York City was a unique privilege. To have assisted that effort through legal skills in a wide variety of legal ways has been a sustained effort, a learning experience—and a pleasure.”

The transition Rosenthal made to the Lincoln Center in 2005 from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where she was a litigator focusing on media, entertainment, and real estate, was not difficult. “My passion is music, the arts, and education. I also love being a lawyer, so the opportunity to bring them all together in one place was extremely exciting for me.”

In fact, Rosenthal is so happy with her job, she actively encourages other lawyers to make the move in-house to challenging nonprofit positions. She even uses social media to post and tweet law job openings in the charitable sector (@GoodCounselBook). “I think people may not realize they have skills they need to make the move from a for-profit to a not-for-profit. Nonprofits need and deserve a highly professional legal labor force. And that connection is only being made now. My vision is to see that the role of lawyers within the nonprofit sector is expanded, fully appreciated, and well-staffed.”

In pioneering and teaching a one-week course at University of Miami Law School, titled “The Role of In-House Counsel at a Nonprofit” this winter, Rosenthal is helping legal academia to make the connection too.

“It’s caught on like wildfire. I’m getting calls from all over the country to set up similar courses. There’s a real desire among students to pick up in-house and nonprofit skills.”

At LCPA, Rosenthal has been particularly successful in tapping pro bono sources. She explains that by offering prospective law firm providers a meaningful project, with clearly defined objectives and beginning and end dates, most firms are happy to help. When she was approached by the president of the New York State Bar to share her know-how in developing pro bono resources for nonprofits statewide, the request ultimately resulted in her chairing a new effort, Charity Corps: Lawyers Helping Nonprofits, and her authoring an informative new book Good Counsel: Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits.

In New York State alone, there are 80,000 nonprofits of which the majority have never met with a lawyer since the day they were incorporated, says Rosenthal. “The vast majority are really tiny—they might be three people in a living room—but they’re carrying out a diverse array of important missions like food pantries and neonatal nutrition, or veterans’ aid—and they need sound legal and governance.”

PETER N. KIRSANOW

BENESCH

Peter N. Kirsanow is a partner with Benesch’s Labor & Employment Practice Group. He returned to Benesch in January 2008 after serving on the President-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington D.C. for two years. While serving on the NLRB, he was involved with significant decisions including Oakwood Healthcare, Inc., Dana/Metaldyne and Oil Capital Sheet Metal, Inc. In addition, Mr. Kirsanow testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Kirsanow is currently serving his second six-year term on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to which he was appointed by President Bush. This is a part-time position.

He also continues to testify before and advise members of the U.S. Congress on employment law matters.

Mr. Kirsanow focuses his legal practice on representing management in employment-related litigation and in contract negotiations, NLRB proceedings, EEO matters and arbitration. Recently, Mr. Kirsanow and a team of Benesch attorneys served as lead counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers in litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the NLRB, challenging the Board’s Notice of Employer Rights Posting Rule. The court ruled in favor of Benesch’s client, striking down the NLRB’s Rule in its entirety. This ruling impacts over 6,000,000 employers nationwide which would have been subject to the posting requirement.

Additionally, Mr. Kirsanow is past chair of the board of directors of the Center for New Black Leadership and is a member of Benesch’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee. This committee helps ensure that the firm promotes an environment in which differences are respected, employees are treated fairly, and individual skills and talents are valued.

Visit www.beneschlaw.com/DiversityAndInclusion to learn more. Mr. Kirsanow can be reached at pkirsanow@beneschlaw.com or 216.363.4481.

The truth is everyone at Lincoln Center from the CEO to the legal department to the porters who sweep up the concert halls after each performance are infused with the driving force of the organization.

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In her book, Rosenthal sets forth the common legal issues facing nonprofits. “It doesn’t answer all questions but it does give the lay of the land,” she says. “It fills a niche and the fact it comes from a sitting GC adds credibility and practicality. Now it’s in the hands of nonprofit leaders and lawyers. “My mini strategic goal is to get the book into the hands of law students and business schools—all areas that touch upon and feed into the nonprofit world.”

Growing up in Roslyn Heights, a suburban community on New York’s Long Island, Rosenthal harbored both musical and legal ambitions. She practiced the violin diligently, but she says the day she learned that Sandra Day O’Connor had been appointed as the first woman to the U.S. Supreme Court was a pivotal day in her youth.

She majored in philosophy at Harvard University. When the time came to make career decisions, Rosenthal’s violin teacher said that she could always be a lawyer who played violin on the side but never the other way around. “Right then, my mind was made up,” Rosenthal says. “It was the DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

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best career advice I’d ever received.”

And while Rosenthal would have thrilled audiences as a professional musician, Glenn Lau-Kee, presidentelect of the New York State Bar Association, says Rosenthal makes a huge impact as a lawyer. She never misses the big picture, and her heart is always in the right place, he says.

Several years ago, Lau-Kee, who heads a small transactional practice in lower Manhattan, hosted a committee from the National People’s Congress of China looking to redraft nonprofit (NGO in China) laws while in New York. “Lesley made a conference room available in Lincoln Center where a lot of CEOs from major not-for-profits in New York State gathered, giving the Chinese visitors more than they bargained for. Even the assistant attorney general in charge of charities was there. Lesley was great. Without her it would have never happened.”

Rosenthal also helps to extend Lincoln Center’s mission of diversity to the legal world.

Diversity advocacy, particularly through her volunteer work with the New York State Bar Association,

is important to her, adds Lau-Kee. Every year since 2006, when she became chair of the New York Bar Association’s 2,600 member Commercial & Federal Litigation Section, Rosenthal has planned and hosted an unfailingly sold-out, annual event entitled Smooth Moves: Career Strategies for Attorneys of Color.

And each year, Rosenthal facilitates the MCCA Diversity Honors Gala—a glamorous, high-spirited, and wellattended event in the center’s famed Alice Tully Hall. This year’s event, hosted by Carl Quintanilla, takes place September 17.

“When I started at Lincoln Center,” says Rosenthal, “people half-jokingly asked if there were more prima donnas onstage or off. The truth is everyone at Lincoln Center from the CEO to the legal department to the porters who sweep up the concert halls after each performance are infused with the driving force of the organization. It’s a great place to be.” D&B Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md. MCCA.COM

Presents

Networking Series WINE, SLOTHS, AND DIVERSITY! Join MCCA and Divas Uncorked, a group of wine enthusiasts, as we teach you about wine and food pairings. We will also present the South Region Thomas L. Sager Award to recognize a firm that is committed to diversity and inclusion. Afterwards, stroll through the Rainforest to meet our aquatic and mammal supporters.

It will be a fun and memorable night of networking, don’t miss this experience!

Event Details:

South Region October 8, 2013 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm

For more information on how you can participate, please contact Jessica Martinez at (202) 739-5901 or jessicamartinez@mcca.com.

South Region Sponsors as of June 14, 2013

The Dallas World Aquarium 1801 N Griffin St. Dallas, TX

RETURN OF THE

FARMER

NATIVE LAW EDUCATORS GROWING AGRICULTURE POLICY IN INDIAN COUNTRY // BY LYDIA LUM

G

rowing up in rural Oklahoma, Janie Simms Hipp was surrounded by small family farms that produced plenty of peaches, soybeans, and tomatoes as long as drought, hail, or floods didn’t strike. Mom-and-pop cattle ranches and egg farms were prolific if livestock vaccinations were successful. And at her grandfather’s tractor dealership, customers bought spare parts or made payments on their equipment— unless hard times left them strapped for cash.

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GRASPING THE TENUOUS, hardscrabble nature of farming and ranching, Hipp became a leading agricultural advocate in law, higher education, and public policy, especially for Native Americans.

More recently, Stacy Leeds, an acclaimed law school dean, professor, and tribal courts judge whose service to Indian Country has sometimes drawn widespread attention, noticed how tribal nation policies involving agriculture were limited in number and scope even though the ranks of Native-owned farms were multiplying.

This pattern intrigued Leeds, an expert in tribal sovereignty and trust land reform. She and ag law experts such as Hipp discussed the prospect of helping tribes craft laws and policies that grow and protect Native farms, ranches, and fisheries. Leeds decided to not only reach out to tribal leaders but to institutionalize such efforts through academia.

This year, she and Hipp launched the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law, where both women now teach. Their consultancy and think tank aim to support tribal food systems throughout the country and steer young people into agricultural careers.

“It’s a logical step nowadays for tribes to focus on governance issues related to agriculture, and Janie

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and I are very excited to be working with them long-term,” says Leeds, who’s dean of the law school, which has a world-renowned master’s degree program in ag and food law. The initiative, she says, is the first of its kind at any U.S. law school.

Being the first to do something is a recurring theme for her.

A Cherokee Nation citizen raised in Muskogee, Okla., Leeds watched with fascination the growing interaction between tribal and state governments in the 1980s. She especially admired then-Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller, whose tenure saw the Cherokee Nation membership numbers grow dramatically and healthcare and children’s initiatives expand.

“It was as if I grew up at the same time that the Cherokee Nation grew up,” Leeds says.

Leeds’ decision to pursue a career in Indian law was cemented during a college class assignment in which she had to prepare mock testimony advocating for Indian child welfare and domestic violence victims.

A University of Tulsa College of Law graduate, she enjoyed scholarly life so much that she pursued jobs in the professoriate. At the University of Wisconsin Law School, she was a William H. Hastie fellow, a program aimed at increasing the number of minority law faculty. She taught at the

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JANIE SIMMS HIPP AGRICULTURAL LAW EXPERT

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University of North Dakota School of Law for three years, directing its Northern Plains Indian Law Center, and then another eight at the University of Kansas School of Law, directing its Tribal Law and Government Center.

Leeds’ move to Arkansas in 2011 marked the first time an American Indian woman was named dean of a U.S. law school.

Her research has focused on property, natural resources, tribal governance and economic development, and Indian law. This year, Leeds received the American Bar Association’s annual Spirit of Excellence award.

Donald “Del” Laverdure, a strategic adviser at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP whose acquaintance with Leeds dates to his University of Wisconsin law student days, calls Leeds’ hiring of Hipp to the Arkansas law school typical of her leadership philosophy. “Not only has Stacy had phenomenal achievements, but she cares about who’s coming in and tries to bring people along with her.

She doesn’t feel threatened by others. She’s a super role model and precedent-setting lawyer.”

As the first female justice on the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court, Leeds’ four-year term included the racially charged 2006 ruling in Lucy Allen v. Cherokee Nation Tribal Council that attracted national news headlines.

The ruling declared that descendants of the Freedmen—former African slaves of the Cherokees—were unconstitutionally prevented from enrolling as Cherokee citizens, rendering them ineligible for tribal benefits and voting. The Cherokees had formally adopted the Freedmen in 1866, but subsequent generations of Cherokees disagreed over what the adoption was supposed to mean long-term and how to regard the descendants. They banned some of the latter from enrollment.

In explaining the court’s majority opinion favoring Allen, a Freedman descendant who had been prevented from enrolling, Leeds wrote that if the Cherokee constitution was “intended to limit membership to citizens ‘by blood,’ it should have said so.”

After the 2006 ruling, however, Cherokee Nation voters passed a constitutional amendment restricting citizenship to people with Indian blood ancestry.

More litigation over the matter has ensued, and Leeds, who two years after leaving the high court won a $50,000 Fletcher Foundation stipend to write a book exploring the history of the Freedmen, hopes

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to incorporate the results into her book.

Throughout her tenure on the high court, she made her home in Tahlequah, Okla., so that people could approach her in public to discuss or disagree with rulings. “It was my responsibility to allow them to hold me accountable,” she says.

She commuted weekly for four years to her teaching jobs: 1,600-plus miles round-trip to Grand Forks, N.D., then 400 miles round-trip to Lawrence, Kan. Now that she is ensconced at the University of Arkansas, the 100-mile, round-trip drive is a cinch by comparison.

Since 2011, she has been one of five members of a national commission appointed by then-Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to examine and recommend improvements to Interior’s management and administration of trust assets for the 566 federally recognized tribes.

“IT WAS AS IF I GREW UP AT THE SAME TIME THAT THE CHEROKEE NATION GREW UP.” —STACY LEEDS

In the course of this work, Leeds began wondering how tribal members who raised livestock or grew crops managed their property resources in the first place. Delving deeper, she realized the legal infrastructure surrounding these livelihoods wasn’t as well-developed as other laws and policies.

“It wasn’t that surprising,” she says. “Modern-day tribal government is relatively recent.” For instance, the priorities at the inception of such government are typically establishment of elections and hiring government employees as well as setting up courts, law enforcement, and social services. Then come business codes and policies, she says.

Further motivating Leeds to launch the agriculture initiative at her law school is the possibility of improving the economic self-sufficiency and employment rate in Indian Country. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15 percent of American

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STACY LEEDS TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY EXPERT

“IF WE GET THIS RIGHT, WE CAN NOT ONLY HELP FEED MORE PEOPLE BUT ALSO BUILD BETTER COMMUNITIES AND MOVE EVERYONE FORWARD.” —JANIE SIMMS HIPP

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Indians and Alaska Natives were unemployed in 2011—about twice the rate of whites.

Hipp, meanwhile, has seen firsthand the financial ruin of farmers and shuttered agribusinesses in a bottomed-out economy. A Chickasaw Nation citizen, she was working as an affirmative action officer for the state of Oklahoma when her boss challenged her to take the LSAT, apparently envisioning her as a lawyer like himself.

As an Oklahoma City University School of Law graduate in 1984, Hipp’s entry into private practice thrust her into litigation spawned by the national farm crisis. During the 1970s, U.S. commodity prices, agricultural exports, and farming income had soared.

Farmers aggressively took out loans to expand. But they eventually sank into debt, partly because of a U.S. grain embargo that President Jimmy Carter imposed against the Soviet Union to protest the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, banks refused to restructure farmers’ debts.

Many mom-and-pop operations from Hipp’s childhood dried up, and thousands of farms nationally slipped into foreclosure. Her grandfather lost his tractor dealership.

At Oklahoma law firms where Hipp worked, most of their cases entailed representation of banks along with insurance defense. Although the national crisis devastated farmers of all ethnicities, Native Americans were disproportionately hit. Their farms were more often in remote areas and therefore further from trucking and shipping destinations than those of whites. So their overhead and other costs usually ran higher, meaning their margin for financial losses was lower.

Deepening the anguish among Native Americans who lost land was the fact that historically land was

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sacred for cultural reasons such as tribal history, ancestral habitation, and burial sites. Traditional ceremonies often involved land, too.

“There were so many foreclosures that I couldn’t take it anymore,” Hipp says of her early years as a lawyer.

A mentor helped her get a job in the state attorney general’s office, where as assistant AG, she became an expert in farming and rural issues.

She became a staff attorney in the 1990s at what is now the National Agricultural Law Center in Fayetteville, Ark., a leader in food and ag law research. There, she wrote for legal publications and focused on state surveys reviewing U.S. environmental, land use, farmland preservation, animal health, food safety, and poultry production laws.

She also taught courses such as ag law and administrative law at the University of Arkansas, where she had earlier earned her LL.M. in ag and food law while working full-time.

In 2007, Hipp joined the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., to administer grant programs focused on improving management of risk among farmers and ranchers. She rose to director of the risk management education division, but remained active in Native American matters, sowing initiatives benefiting indigenous people.

She co-founded the nonprofit Intertribal Native American Women and Youth in Agriculture, which encourages education and preservation of tribal food systems and culture.

“It was tough keeping that ball in the air,” Hipp says of her Native interests. “But this was my way of staying connected to my roots.”

Two years later, she became founding director of USDA’s Office of Tribal Relations, responsible for government-to-government relations between the USDA and the tribes. She eventually shifted out of the office but remained a senior adviser to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack on Native American issues.

Among other things, she influenced the $760 million Keepseagle settlement, which resolved a class-action lawsuit covering discrimination claims dating to 1981. Native Americans had alleged that when applying for farm loans at USDA offices, they were denied the same kinds of loans and servicing granted to white farmers. Because USDA assistance was typically a last resort, many of the Native farmers lost their farms.

Hipp plays down her role in settlement talks, but Laverdure calls her presence irreplaceable.

MCCA.COM

“Janie brought a lifetime of experience to the table,” says Laverdure, who was the Interior Department’s acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs before joining Akin Gump. “She really did explain how the farmers were turned away for loans. At such negotiations, there are advocates who rise up, and Janie was one of them. She has remarkable passion for all things agriculture.”

Now that she’s director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the Arkansas law school, Hipp hopes to help tribes address a spectrum of legal issues surrounding their farming interests, whether it’s how to best ensure that farms and land seamlessly pass to the next generation or how to nurture a fledgling operation.

Because the number of Native farm operators already jumped 88 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to a USDA census, Hipp expects people in Indian Country to continue starting farms and ranches.

“We want to mindfully plan for the future and calibrate for continued success,” she says.

Housing the consultancy at Photo courtesy of First Nations Development Institute and Cochiti Youth Experience the law school offers avenues to engage the legal and acaand sophomores so they’re thinking about college demic communities in analyzing aspects of Indian early,” Leeds says. law that are too-rarely discussed in non-Indian venThe youth component of the initiative particuues, she notes. As an example, some tribal land-use larly beckons Hipp, who has been long involved in policies are tethered to treaties agreed to long ago by cultivating a new generation of farmers. “If we get tribes and the U.S. government. this right,” she says, “we can not only help feed more She and Leeds are encouraging Native American people but also build better communities and move teens to seek agricultural careers, whether it’s everyone forward.” D&B through law, horticulture, or another discipline.

As a land-grant institution, their university has Lydia Lum is a freelance writer and former reporter for multiple agriculture and related academic programs. the Houston Chronicle and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

“We especially want to reach high school freshmen

MCCA.COM

JULY/AUGUST 2013 DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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In an American law firm culture marked by a glaring lack of diversity at both attorney and partner levels, client and in-house demands to fix the problem continue to rise. Diversity initiatives are often criticized, however, as cosmetic and disingenuous.

BY BRIAN DABBS

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SHOOK, HARDY AND BACON LLP, an international firm based in Kansas City, Mo., has emerged as a beacon of comparative success for law firms aspiring to affect substantive change in their diversity and inclusion attitudes and practice. Through the implementation of an innovative, widely praised Diversity and Inclusion Checklist, among other initiatives, SH&B has embedded diversity and inclusion in the firm’s fabric.

“Our partners get it. We talk about it often. We talk about it in such a way that it doesn’t seem like a separate, extra thing. It’s just something we do,” says Koriambanya Carew, director of Strategic Diversity Initiatives (SDI) at SH&B. “I know of some firms that say they’re committed to diversity and they sponsor things outside the firm but don’t do internal initiatives. They don’t have a dialogue.

That’s something that sets us apart.”

Over the past decade, SH&B has accumulated an array of awards and accolades for its diversity and inclusion efforts. The firm currently surpasses national averages in nearly all categories concerning the retention and promotion of ethnic and racial minority and female attorneys and partners. SH&B attorneys, partners, and staff members laud the Diversity and Inclusion Checklist as an effective and fundamental mechanism in accomplishing inclusion advancements. Other firms and corporations across the nation have sought to replicate and emulate the concept, according to SH&B officials.

“I’m an older white male so I’ll speak for that group. I think [the checklist] has been a huge help. The checklist offers concrete examples of little things people can do to make everyone feel valued and part of the team,” says Jim Muehlberger, DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR® JULY/AUGUST 2013

SH&B partner and chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. “It makes a huge difference. It lets everyone know we want you to get off the sidelines and into the game.”

SH&B pioneered this law firm diversity initiative in 2005. Currently comprised of over 80 action items, the checklist offers task options ranging from reading diversity material to incorporating diverse attorneys into casework.

In 2012, SH&B attorneys and partners were required to complete five to 10 action items as part of their annual compensation and evaluation process.

Tasks fall under five categories: 1) Enhance SH&B’s Diversity & Inclusion Efforts and Market SH&B’s Diversity & Inclusion Successes; 2) Engage and Promote SH&B’s Attorneys; 3) Advance Diversity and Inclusion within the Legal Profession; 4) Recruit Diverse Talent; and 5) Experience Diversity. Over the years, the content and number of action items required to complete has varied.

The character of the checklist is constantly evolving.

“It’s important in general that this thing cycles a bit, so people aren’t getting bored with the same things each year and they are challenged to do new things. I think they’ve done a darn good job of that, honestly,” says Scott Airpoli, a sixth-year associate at SH&B, who specializes in business and commercial litigation. “[The action items] run the gamut…everything from attending presentations to talking to people in the firm or out of the firm…reading articles and books related to diversity and inclusion. There’s something for everyone.”

Initially, SH&B mandated only partners participate in the exercise. Now, all attorneys from the firm’s 10 locations throughout the United States and Europe complete the checklist.

The most commonly completed tasks of 2012: 1) Ask a new and/or diverse attorney in or out of my practice group/ division about his/her career development plans and how I can help; 2) Discuss the business and cultural imperative for diversity with an SH&B attorney; 3) Recognize and reject all forms of intolerance. If I hear someone saying anything even remotely inappropriate, address it immediately.

The SH&B Diversity and Inclusion Committee consists of 30 attorneys and partners from all firm locations, MCCA.COM

SHOOK HARDY & BACON ATTORNEYS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): GULED ADAM, SCOTT AIRPOLI, KORIAMBANYA CAREW, AND JIM MUEHLBERGER

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Female Partners at Shook Hardy & Bacon

Female Equity Partners at Shook Hardy & Bacon

Compared to 20% Nationally

Compared to 15% Nationally

26.7%

and seven additional staff members, all working to ensure diversity and inclusion continue to thrive in the workplace.

Nine subcommittees work on specific diversity efforts, including recruiting, client relations, attorney engagement and advancement, buy-in, education and awareness, staff diversity, women’s initiatives, and policy oversight.

During the committee’s annual meeting, members, along with other invited firm officials, brainstorm adaptations to the checklist. The final decision-making revolves around committee member input, and attorney and partner feedback throughout the year. Since the amount of energy and time involved with different action items varies, Carew says the firm may consider a weighting system.

“Throughout the year, we receive comments from people.

We consider them…and where other needs are. We received some comments on the checklist but there are also some things that I would like to see,” says Carew, a former litigation attorney whose passion for diversity partially originates with her personal background. She was born in Canada of Sierra Leone descent and grew up in a northeast Nigerian region currently plagued by religious and ethnic strife.

The checklist provides an opportunity for attorneys and partners to make concrete contributions to the environment of diversity and inclusion at SH&B through action items such as actively recruiting diverse, lateral talent, and submitting ideas to improve diverse retention and promotion. But the checklist also fosters an atmosphere at SH&B where diversity and inclusion dialogue is commonplace and interaction among diverse attorneys and partners is the norm.

“It forces associate X, who wants to make partner and may not be that interested in the diversity initiatives, to go have lunch with someone or meet with someone who doesn’t look like them,” says Guled Adam, a fifth-year associate of Tanzanian and Somali descent. “In general, it makes people gravitate toward others that don’t look like them.”

Women at American law firms with 251 to 500 attorneys make up, on average, 20 percent of partners and 15 percent of equity partners, while their representation at SH&B is, respectively, 26.7 percent and 22.6 percent, according to National Association for Law Placement 2012 statistics.

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22.6%

National averages for racial and ethnic minority male and female partners registered at 4.37 percent and 2.07 percent respectively, while SH&B claimed 5.34 percent minority male partners and 3.88 percent minority female partners.

“Shook Hardy & Bacon is walking the talk when it comes to diversity,” says Andrea Juarez, interim executive director at the Center for Legal Inclusiveness.

SH&B works in conjunction with the Center for Legal Inclusiveness, a fee-based advocacy nonprofit based in Denver, to devise and hone inclusion initiatives. Despite the challenges the law community continues to grapple with regarding diversity and inclusion, Juarez says SH&B has developed the fundamental principles essential to shepherd the firm in the right direction.

“Their firm and leadership understand the reality that for an organization to genuinely become more diverse and inclusive there needs to be full-firm commitment,” says Juarez. “Diversity and inclusiveness efforts can’t be left to only the diversity committee or even just rubber-stamped by an executive committee. For real organizational impact there needs to be involvement from attorneys at all levels.”

According to Juarez, many of the firms that partner with the Center for Legal Inclusiveness are now employing checklists as a means to keep attorneys, partners, and staff members vigilant about diversity.

In recent years, SH&B has been showered with awards and accolades praising its diversity and inclusion progress. In 2011 and 2012, the firm obtained Gold Standard Certification from the Women and Law Empowerment Forum. In order to receive that acknowledgment, SH&B was required to meet or exceed three of six criteria demonstrating female promotion success, as defined by the forum.

SH&B surpassed all six criteria.

The firm was awarded the title of “Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality” by the Human Rights Campaign from 2010 to 2013. SH&B also received the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s Thomas L. Sager Award in 2001, 2002, and 2010. This year, the firm is a finalist for the award.

Despite its accomplishments, there’s room for improvement in SH&B’s quest to strength its diversity representation.

MCCA.COM

Minority Male Partners at Shook Hardy & Bacon

Minority Female Partners at Shook Hardy & Bacon

Compared to 4.37% Nationally

Compared to 2.07% Nationally

5.34%

SH&B officials admit the firm’s success in hiring, retaining, and promoting of ethnic and racial minority and LGBT attorneys has yet to reach desired levels. The officials, however, vow to remain committed and resolute.

“My concern is that we don’t want to plateau. We want to keep improving. That’s what we’re trying to do here,” says Muehlberger. “Every year we’ve made a little more progress, but we have miles to go.”

Many American law firms, according to Carew, do not have diversity committees and do not have positions committed full-time to enhancing inclusion, such as SDI director.

SH&B has seemingly made real, comprehensive progress due to its early foray into diversity and inclusion efforts.

“If you talk to people that were here then and now, you can tell there is definitely a difference of how we have this conversation. When we instituted the checklist, we said ‘Here are the things we can do’,” says Carew, emphasizing the firm’s success in moving beyond the education and awareness stage of diversity and inclusion. “Now the conver-

3.88%

sation is very different. We’ve done A, B, and C. We’re now focusing what we can do moving ahead.”

For other law firms, the checklist serves as a paradigm.

According to Carew, the firm is routinely contacted with requests for insight into similar initiatives at other law firms and corporations.

“We’ve shared it with well over 60 companies,” says Carew. “That’s part of the reason we put it on our website— so people can go check it out themselves.”

Considering the totality of SH&B’s diversity and inclusion effort, the checklist is only one, albeit apparently critical, aspect of its grand scheme. Other initiatives include sponsoring networking events, participating in pipeline programs, recruiting lateral talent, and creating a presence at local law schools in order to entice prospective attorneys. SH&B’s diversity and inclusion success, according to Carew, is the product of wide-ranging, assorted efforts.

“Someone may ask if we’ve achieved what we have because of the checklist. Yes and no. There are many initiatives,” says Carew. “What the checklist has done is enable us to have the conversation take place.”

Regardless of the causes, SH&B has created a cohesive environment that is rare among American law firms. The firm’s attorneys readily commend the SH&B leadership and wherewithal that has enabled them to thrive at the highest industry levels with rich cultural experience.

“I think it’s night and day at Shook compared to other firms. I’m from the East Coast. I have no ties to the Midwest. A lot of my friends were going to firms in New York or D.C. But I saw this firm making a huge push towards diversity,” says Adam, emphasizing his personal effort to draw in diverse talent through the recruiting process. “I knew I’d have opportunities here that I wouldn’t have elsewhere. A lot of that push is client-driven but it is also altruistic.” D&B

“My concern is that we don’t want to plateau. We want to keep improving.

That’s what we’re trying to do here. Every year we’ve made a little more progress, but we have miles to go.”— JIM MUEHLBERGER MCCA.COM

22.7%

Brian Dabbs is a freelance writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. JULY/AUGUST 2013 DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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WHICH CAME FIRST… THE DIVERSE LEGAL DEPARTMENT OR THE DIVERSE BOARD?

AND DOES IT MATTER? More and more, general counsel are a company's trusted leaders.

They can leverage their power to influence boards. Diverse boards can push for more diverse executives.

The following article explores the relationship between the two.

BY JONATHAN GRONER

?

R 36

ecent efforts to increase the number of women and minorities on the boards of major American corporations have not yielded significant results.

Just 16 percent of Fortune 500 board members are women, and about 13 percent are racial and ethnic minorities, according to numerous studies. And those figures, while measly, represent a slight increase since 2004, the Alliance for Board Diversity (ABD) stated in a 2011 report.

IT’S NOT AS IF THE BENEFITS OF BOARD DIVERSITY ARE IN DOUBT. The ABD concluded that “as businesses, markets, and customers are increasingly connected through the global economy, diverse points of view are essential to the growth of profitable corporations.”

Those diverse perspectives, the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) wrote in a 2012 report, often come from shareholders, employees, suppliers, and regulators. The NACD report states: “Board composition … has not always kept pace. The benefits of board diversity, both tangible and intangible, range from greater understanding of customers and employees to the value of having multiple perspectives around the table.”

As a business brief in the U.S. Supreme Court has said, diversity creates a more competitive workforce that can “facilitate unique and creative approaches to problemsolving.” Christine Edwards, then general counsel of Bank One Corporation, has been quoted as saying that “diversity is good business.”

Like the advocates who have championed corporate board diversity, advocates within the legal industry have tried to boost the number of in-house corporate general counsel who are minorities and women.

Interestingly, they have had more success with women chief legal officers than with racial minorities; latest figures from the Minority Corporate Counsel Association show that more than 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies—108 to be exact—now have a woman general counsel. Only 9.4 percent of top companies’ general counsel are members of racial minorities, according to the MCCA study.

Only 15.3 percent of partners in major law firms are women, so women are doing relatively well, by nearly any standard, at securing the top in-house legal job in major corporations in this decade.

This leads to a question that has not been studied at length, if at all: Is there a possible path to increasing board diversity that takes advantage of, and leverages, the existing diversity advances that have been made in the chief legal officer’s chair? Are companies with women general counsel more likely to appoint women to board positions? Or, are DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR® DIVERSIT

JULY/AUGUST 2013 2013

companies that have more women on their boards more likely to elevate women to the post of corporate general counsel? Either way, there may be a little-noticed opportunity to boost corporate diversity.

The path probably runs both ways. Companies that start with a larger-than-average number of women on their boards are often the ones that are most able to add women to their high executive ranks, including general counsel.

And in some companies, a general counsel who is a strong advocate of diversity can be an ambassador of diversity throughout the corporation, including its board.

“Our position is usually that we need to get boards to become diverse first, as we believe that this will become a pervasive value throughout the organization,” says Peter Gleason, head of publications and research at the NACD. “We start with the board as a catalyst of change. The board can drive this tone throughout the organization. However, it can go both ways. Sometimes the company creates a strategy of inclusion that they push through the whole organization, including the board.”

A research report “Advancing Women Leaders: The Connection Between Women Board Directors and Women Corporate Officers,” issued in 2008 by the nonprofit study group Catalyst, found that the percentage of women on a company’s board is directly correlated with the future percentage of women in its senior management ranks. This connection, Catalyst said, could in fact lead to a way of increasing the number of women in corporate leadership, including the general counsel or chief legal officer.

Catalyst concluded that having more women in corporate leadership sends a critical message to women entering the workforce that their contributions are valued. The presence of women on boards, Catalyst noted, would have a strong impact on the number of women in key positions in the corporation.

Similarly, an April 2013 article in the McKinsey Quarterly, the flagship online publication of the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Company, concludes that, among other things, diversity in a company’s board can lead to diversity in the executive suite. That would include major corporations’ top legal officers—and can become a way to accelerate the progress

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"IT'S ABOUT CREATING DIVERSITY WITH AT LEAST THREE PEOPLE, SO THAT THEY CAN EFFECTIVELY EXPRESS A DIVERGENT VIEW." —Leslie Bradshaw of women and minorities into those positions.

The article notes: “Our research suggests a correlation between the representation of women on boards and on top-executive teams. Leaders at many companies encourage female (and male) board members to establish relationships with potential future women leaders and to serve as their role models or sponsors. And it was clear from our interviews that the boards of the best-performing companies provide muchneeded discipline to sustain progress on gender diversity, often simply by asking, ‘Where are the women?’”

The McKinsey article was based on a study that the consulting company conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. The study, based on data gathered in 2012 and 2013, was entitled “Advancing Women to the Top.” It concluded that if a major company makes a concerted effort to put at least three women on its board, it reaches “the tipping point for companies to start integrating gender diversity and inclusion at all levels.”

Although only 19 percent of the companies in a sample of the Fortune 1000 made that cut in 2011, the McKinsey and U.S. Chamber researchers were optimistic that other companies could emulate them.

Leslie Bradshaw, a Forbes columnist on women’s business issues and herself a chief operating officer of a start-up MCCA.COM

company, says a key point of the McKinsey/Chamber study, and of the article based on the study, is that “if there are at least three members of a minority-status group, such as women, within a board or a C-suite, they would become an effective decision-making group, and someone would find it hard to go against the wishes of this minority of that size.

It’s about creating diversity with at least three people, so that they can effectively express a divergent view.”

What about the other way around? If diverse boards can help more and more women and minorities become chief legal officers, can diverse chief legal officers be catalysts to make boards diverse? Less has been said about this concept than about the idea of having boards lead the drive to diversity.

WomenCorporateDirectors, a nonprofit focused on placing women on corporate boards, has identified, as two of the key drivers of women on boards, both company CEOs and diversity executives. CEOs can “act as change agents in their companies, both by influencing the board and by actively sponsoring female executives up through the leadership ranks,” while diversity executives can “identify women and other diverse talent and make sure these individuals are visible to senior management and outside networks.”

Although the group doesn’t specifically identify chief legal officers as drivers of board diversity, there is no reason that they cannot take the role, especially if they are themselves women or minorities. They can, in effect, act as diversity executives.

The ultimate answer may lie with the sharply increased role of in-house chief legal officers in major corporations. In an April 2012 InsideCounsel magazine article entitled “General Counsel’s Heightened Influence in the Boardroom,” author Melissa Maleske writes that the role of corporate general counsel has become far more important, more hands-on, and broader in recent years.

Maleske notes that today’s general counsel have become as important to the board as the chief financial officer.

“General counsel are now in the center of the action of the company because most of a company’s decisions now involve the kinds of issues that involve the essential skills of general counsel,” Maleske writes.

She quotes legendary former GE General Counsel Ben Heineman as saying that the skills now required of GCs “go far beyond being a technical lawyer. They have to be wise counselors and leaders.”

Although the article doesn’t specifically mention board diversity, in it former Monsanto GC Bill Ide says that today “the public is much more directly involved in the scrutiny of everything a company does, and that just wasn’t true 15 years ago. Companies were much more insular.”

Now that the general counsel must act as a wise counselor and leader, as well as respond to the public scrutiny that companies face, the next issue on the GC’s plate may well be increasing board diversity. D&B JULY/AUGUST 2013

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REGISTER TODAY!

14th

Annual

MCCA’s 14th Annual Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference Marriott Marquis Hotel | New York, NY

Designed to help you achieve diversity & inclusion success in your organization!

Featuring 3 Amazing Tracks

• Professional Development • Leadership Management

• Diversity & Inclusion Practicioner For details and to register go to www.mcca.com/pathways2013 Sponsors as of 6/24/13

As individuals and organizations committed to the advancement of diversity and inclusion in the legal workplace, we all know that it takes strong leadership, effective practitioners, and solid professional development strategies to create success. MCCA’s 14th Annual Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference’s full-day of educational programs and networking opportunities are designed to help you succeed. Our panel discussions and hands-on workshops will provide you with the tools necessary to support a diverse legal team, make your organization more inclusive, and increase diversity in the profession. We are committed to providing you with clear strategies from every session that can be immediately implemented in your career and workplace. The 14th Annual Pathways Conference is one you don’t want to miss!

14th

Annual

Conference Agenda

Advisory Board

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2013

HONORARY CO-CHAIRS

7:30 - 9:00 AM

BREAKFAST & REGISTRATION

9:00 -10:30 AM

OPENING PLENARY SESSION: TALENT PIPELINE & FISHER’S AFTERSHOCKS

10:30 - 11:00 AM

BREAK

11:00 - 12:30 PM

12:30 - 2:30 PM

Professional Development

Diversity & Inclusion Practitioner

Leadership & Management

101.

201.

301.

Top 10 Tips to Navigate the Unwritten Rules in Your Workplace

4:00 - 4:30 PM

4:30 - 6:00 PM

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Creating Effective Sponsorship Programs to Develop and Grow Diverse Talent

Eric F. Grossman Chief Legal Officer Morgan Stanley

Patricia R. Hatler Executive Vice President Chief Legal and Governance Officer Nationwide

R. Hewitt Pate Vice President and General Counsel Chevron

LUNCH & PLENARY: MINORITY & FEMALE GCS IN FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES

102.

2:30 - 4:00 PM

Talking about Fisher: A Brainstorming Session on Talking About Fisher in Your Organization

Joshua B. Frank General Counsel & Secretary DHL Americas

Time Management - The Foundation for Success

202.

The Role of Diversity Professionals in Business Development

302.

Maximizing the Potential of Employee Resource/Network Groups or Affinity Groups for Business Success

Partner Drew Eckl & Farnham, LLP

BREAK

103.

Transitioning In and Out of Career Changes Effectively and Gracefully

203.

Law Firm - Law Department Collaborations for Diversity & Inclusion

303.

Implicit Bias & Intersectionality for Leaders

Conference Details Registration is NOT confirmed until payment has been received

by MCCA. Electronic confirmation of your registration will be sent within ten business days of receipt of payment or upon completion of payment process if registering online. Full registration includes access to conference sessions, electronic course materials, and scheduled meals. Program sessions are subject to limited attendance due to facility capacity constraints, so please pre-register for your desired courses.

MCCA is not responsible for any expenses associated with travel, lodging, or other costs incurred by the registrant, including in the event that MCCA must cancel the conference for any reason.

Audio or video recording or transcription of any portion of the seminar is prohibited unless express consent is granted by MCCA.

SUBSTITUTIONS AND CANCELLATIONS

All cancellations must be received in writing; telephone cancellations will not be accepted. Cancellations received in writing by August 23, 2013, will be fully refunded minus a $50.00 administrative fee. Individuals canceling in writing after August 23 but prior to September 9 will receive a full credit towards attendance at MCCA’s 15th Annual Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference (only monies paid for the 14th Annual Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference will be credited; after applying credit, any balance due is the responsibility of the registrant). If written confirmation of cancellation is not received by September 9, no refunds or credits will be issued of any kind. Credits will be processed after the meeting.

Deborah A. Elam Vice President & Chief Diversity Officer General Electric Deborah Epstein Henry Founder & President Flex-Time Lawyers LLC Co-Founder & Managing Director Bliss Lawyers

NETWORKING RECEPTION

REGISTRATION CONFIRMATION

Theresa Cropper Chief Diversity Officer Perkins Coie LLP

Substitutions are always welcome; please submit a written request along with a completed registration form for the new individual in order to transfer the registration. Cancellations and requests for substitutions should be submitted to education@mcca.com.

ACCOMMODATIONS

MCCA is holding a block of rooms at the Marriott Marquis Hotel at the rate of $369/night (single/double). For reservations, call 800-843-4898 and indicate you are attending MCCA’s 2013 Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference to receive the group rate. You can also reserve a room online by visiting www.mcca. com/pathways2013.

DISCOUNTED AIRFARE

Robert L. Jones, Jr. Senior Labor & Employment Attorney American Airlines Yupo Liu Attorney Microsoft Corporation Dr. Christopher J. Metzler Senior Associate Dean Applied Management Degrees Georgetown University Rosalyn P. Mitchell Associate General Counsel Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Peter M. Reyes, Jr. Partner Barnes & Thornburg LLP

American Airlines is the official airline of the Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference. Book online and receive a 5% discount off of published fares. Travel discounts are valid September 13-20, 2013 to New York, NY (EWR, HPN, JFK, LGA).To make a discounted reservation, go to www.AA.com and use promotion code A9793BG.

Wendy Shiba President National Asian Pacific American Bar Association

Join us for MCCA’s Diversity Honors Gala!

September 17, 2013

Gina Warren Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion Nike, Inc.

Contact Jennifer Chen at 202-739-5902 or visit www.mcca.com/gala

Dawn R. Tezino Partner MehaffyWeber

Justin A. Xenitelis General Counsel Thor Equities, LLC

Session Descriptions Opening Plenary: Talent Pipeline & Fisher’s Aftershocks Fisher v. University of Texas. The complex case. The impactful decision.

What ripple effects will this U.S. Supreme Court decision have for legal education and legal workplaces? MCCA has asked key experts to pen their opinions on how to understand the impact of this ruling, and you will hear their analysis in this morning plenary discussion.

Luncheon Program: Minority & Female GCs in Fortune 500 Companies Although the number of female and racial/ethnic minority General Counsel of Fortune 500 companies are low, the numbers are slowly but surely increasing. Who are these trailblazers and what can we learn from their successes, life lessons, and insights? This plenary will highlight a number of these trailblazers and their stories.

Professional Development Track 101. Top 10 Tips to Navigate the Unwritten Rules in Your Workplace

Applicable to attorneys of all seniority levels, the panelists in this session will discuss their “Top 10 Tips” on how to maximize your potential for success and avoid pitfalls that can derail careers.

102. Time Management - The Foundation for Success

Do you manage your time or does time manage you? Experts will discuss what you can do to regain control over how you spend your time so that you can effectively implement networking, career development, and leadership development strategies that will drive your career forward.

103. Transitioning In and Out of Career Changes Effectively and Gracefully

This panel of attorneys will share their stories and advice on how to transition in and out of workplaces in a manner in which you effectively maintain relationships and preserve your integrity.

Interested in sponsorship?

Contact Jeff Viles at 419-873-1404 or jviles@vsquared.biz

See the website for confirmed speakers!

Diversity & Inclusion Practitioner Track 201. Talking about Fisher: A Brainstorming Session on Talking About Fisher in Your Organization

The decision in Fisher v. University of Texas will undoubtedly have ripple effects in how your organization talks about and implements diversity and inclusion. This brainstorming session will allow you to hear from people who have analyzed the implications of the decision and strategize with other practitioners who are seeking to promote a constructive dialogue in their organizations.

202. The Role of Diversity Professionals in Business Development

Most organizations don’t fully maximize the skills and resources that diversity professionals bring to the business development arena. This panel of diversity professionals will candidly discuss what it takes to get integrated into the business development process and how diversity professionals can add value in business generation and business transition.

203. Law Firm - Law Department Collaborations for Diversity & Inclusion

Is your legal department looking to impact the pipeline of diverse lawyers entering the profession, but unable to hire directly from law schools? Are you with a law firm looking to engage your clients on pipeline issues? This how-to discussion will teach legal departments the ins and outs of creating an internship program for diverse law students. Law firm leaders will learn how firms can partner with corporate legal departments to support these programs. Hear from experienced panelists who have created successful internship programs.

Leadership & Management Track 301. Creating Effective Sponsorship Programs to Develop and Grow Diverse Talent

Specifically designed for leaders of organizations, this panel will combine the expertise of the Center for Talent Innovation with insights from leaders (general counsel & managing partners) who are executing successful sponsorship programs to provide attendees with ideas that they can implement in their own organizations.

302. Maximizing the Potential of Employee Resource/Network Groups or Affinity Groups for Business Success

This panel discussion will offer ideas on how to best use identity-based network/ resource/affinity groups to help your organization drive business success.

303. Implicit Bias & Intersectionality for Leaders

This workshop will focus on the information that leaders need to know about implicit bias and how implicit bias impacts different groups so that organizational mission, vision, and values around diversity and inclusion can be articulated and executed effectively.

Monday, September 16, 2013

14th

Annual

REGISTRATION FORM CONTACT INFORMATION

14th Annual Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference | Marriott Marquis Hotel | New York, NY NAME TITLE ORGANIZATION ADDRESS CITY

STATE

PHONE

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FAX

E-MAIL

REGISTRATION ITEMS

Please indicate your registration type*:

$350 Early Bird (Deadline: August 12, 2013) $350 MCCA** and ACC members/FANs/Pathways Sponsor Rate $350 Group Rate (Rate is per person; 3+ from the same organization) $450 General Registration (After August 12, 2013) Add a ticket to attend MCCA’s Diversity Honors Gala

at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on Tuesday, September 17, 2013

3 WAYS TO REGISTER ONLINE www.mcca.com (credit card only)

FAX form to (202) 739-5999 MAIL form and check to: Minority Corporate Counsel Association 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20004

$625 MCCA Diversity Honors Gala, Non In-House Counsel $475 MCCA Diversity Honors Gala, In-House Counsel Ticket $450 MCCA Diversity Honors Gala, Member/FAN Ticket $

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Note: Registration is NOT CONFIRMED until payment has been received.

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Check here if billing address is the same as listed in contact information

*By submitting this form, you agree to MCCA’s cancellation policy and grant MCCA the right to photograph, film, and use your likeness and voice in MCCA related publicity and advertising.

MCCA is a not-for-profit organization classified under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code. MCCA’s tax identification number is 13-3920905. ** MCCA corporate members receive up to 3 complimentary registrations to attend the Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference. Contact a staff member at education@mcca.com for details.

ASSOCIATION FOCUS

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

THE NATIONAL LGBT BAR ASSOCIATION

42

Now the LGBT community is recognized by large law firms who demonstrate their commitment to diversity by underwriting both the LGBT bar and Lavender Law’s expenses.”

For attorneys like Singer, attending Lavender Law conferences has been a veritable lifeline over the years. “I practice in rural New Jersey. I can see hayfields from my window. I was 2013 LAVENDER LAW also the first openly gay attorney to practice in the state,” he CONFERENCE says. “Over the years when I needed to confer with attorneys who were working on LGBT rights-related cases there was SET AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF THE really no one to reach out to, so when Lavender Law came PASSIONATE 1987 LESBIAN & GAY MARCH along, it was a wondrous thing. On that same token, that ON WASHINGTON, a small band of gay and lesbian period was a time of despair and gloom in our community. family law practitioners formally introduced the idea of It was the height of the AIDS crisis. We were watching our creating the National LGBT Bar Association. The following friends and colleagues die around us. Lavender Law and the year, the association’s annual Lavender Law Conference got contacts I made there, made things a lot better.” its start in San Francisco as a modest but enthusiastically Like the first conference, the 2013 Lavender Law attended weekend-long event. And now, 25 years later, the Conference is being held in San Francisco (August 22-24). Its conference is the largest annual assembly of LGBT legal two days of workshops and forums feature a first-rate cast of professionals in the counspeakers including prominent try, serving a wide ra nge of LGBT law practitioners demographics including law Nan D. Hunter, associate students, judges, and pracdean for Graduate Programs titioners ranging from Am and professor of law at Law 200 attorneys to family Georgetown University lawyers who hang up their Law Center; Pat Cain, own shingle and encomprofessor of law at Santa —D’ARCY KEMNITZ passing the full diversity of Clara University and the legal issues facing the LGBT Aliber Family Chair in Law, community. The once small gathering has grown to nearly Emerita, at the University of Iowa; Jenny Pizer, Law and 2,000 participants and is sponsored by corporations like Policy Project director for Lambda Legal; Jon Davidson, legal Bank of America, Shell, BMW of North America, MetLife, director at Lambda Legal; Shannon Minter, legal director and Hewlett Packard. In addition to corporations, Lavender at the National Center for Lesbian Rights; Paul Smith, a Law is supported by law firms like Seyfarth Shaw, Reed partner at Jenner & Block; Nancy Polikoff, a professor of law Smith, and Fried Frank, and legal support services such as at American University Washington College of Law, who is Navigant and Major, Lindsey and Africa. serving as the McDonald/Wright Chair in Law at UCLA The Lavender Law Conference offers an unparalleled and Faculty Chair of the Williams Institute; and Bill Singer, opportunity for its LGBT participants and their allies to cona partner and founder of Singer & Fedun LLC. nect and learn from each other’s career and life experiences— D’Arcy Kemnitz, executive director of the National LGBT some very familiar and others completely new and different.

Bar Association and its very first employee since 2004, expects “The changes over the years have been phenomenal. It 1,800 participants to attend the conference, which will blows my mind,” says Bill Singer, the general counsel of the promote advocacy and education on topics that are meaningful Washington, D.C.-based National LGBT Bar Association to the LGBT community, from marriage and adoption law and veteran Lavender Law attendee. “For the first 15 years, the to openly transgender service in the military and providing Lavender Law conference was a volunteer-run operation run benefits for the family of now openly serving LGB members of on a shoestring budget. The board chair was licking envelopes. the military. But unlike in years past, the conference will not

“THE LAWYERS WHO PRESENT AT AND ATTEND LAVENDER LAW ARE ON THE FRONT LINES.”

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concentrate exclusively on LGBT issues; it will include discussions of energy, corporate, and tax law. Participants can use the conference as an opportunity to receive up to 12 CLE credits.

Additionally, Lavender Law boasts the largest minority career fair in the nation. Kemnitz describes it as a day-long tabletop event where employers can prove their commitment to including LGBT students in their organization’s culture. Prospective employers are comprised of mostly private firms, a smattering of government entities, and the Jag Corps representing the armed services. Private employers participating in the conference are required to include gender identity/expression along with sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination statement.

Bill Singer adds: “For anyone of my generation, it’s truly astounding to see more than 300 recruiters taking the time to recruit young lawyers who are LGBT. When I was young we had to hide our sexuality. After graduating from Columbia I went to work at a firm; when I came out, I was summarily thrown out. They didn’t want a gay in their firm. This makes Lavender Law’s Career Fair all that much more remarkable to me.”

Such declarations are needed to mitigate the formidable employment challenges transgender attorneys face. Firms are slower in hiring transgender lawyers, a situation that has not improved much since longtime Lavender Law attendee Phyllis Randolph Frye, who is transgender, was unable to find neither a job nor a mentor after graduating from the University of Houston Law School in 1981. Now an associate judge for the City of Houston Municipal Courts (the Judge Phyllis Frye and Bill Singer are longtime attendees.

first transgender judge appointed in the nation), Frye was instrumental in getting Lavender Law involved in transgender issues. Not long after naming her as an alternate delegate in 1992, the board voted to back a trans inclusive Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA) at a time when other gay rights organizations were reluctant to include transgender people in their struggle.

Frye will speak at the plenary titled “Hardwick to Windsor: The Last 25 Years of the LGBT Equality Movement.”

“Many who will be in the audience probably weren’t born when Harcourt [the case that held that sodomy was a crime] came out in ’86. At 65, I have a pretty good picture of history.

In my speech at Lavender Law I intend to cover Stonewall and talk about the gender queers and the part they have played in the gay rights movement,” says Frye, who’s known as “the grandmother of the transgender law movement.”

Twenty-fifth anniversaries are a time to celebrate, reflect on the past, and look ahead, says Kemnitz. Many believe that the next generation of LGBT legal professionals are safe to come out and secure in their job with nothing to worry about, but that’s not entirely true. ENDA is nowhere near close to passing.

A person fired for being gay has no recourse under current laws regardless of title or position. Much work remains to be done.

“The lawyers who present at and attend Lavender Law are on the front lines and behind the scenes building on the progress we have made,” Kemnitz continues. “We’re a big part of the current economic and legal landscape within the larger LGBT movement. We’ve built a professional association that provides membership services, career advancement opportunities, and a camaraderie that comes from sharing experiences. One very meaningful part of the conference is our opportunity to pay tribute to the lawyers who paved the way for us today. It’s so important to acknowledge them.” D&B Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.

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DIVERSITY NEWS

BY JENNIFER HOOVER

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS WORTH A POUND OF CURE

A PREFERENCE PRIMER: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS BANKRUPTCY IS A PART OF THE EVERYDAY VERNACULAR FOR COMPANIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. Although bankruptcies have

44

slowly trended downward over the past few years, they remain a viable restructuring option for many distressed companies. Even if your company has escaped the distressed financial situation that may lead to a bankruptcy filing, your company has undoubtedly been affected by the bankruptcy filing of another. For suppliers of a bankrupt debtor, who often have had long and loyal relationships with the debtor, bankruptcies surely upset the traditional relationships that a supplier and the bankrupt debtor had prior to the bankruptcy filing. Typically, the supplier is left with a large receivable that likely will remain unpaid (or will be paid back at a fraction of what was owed) and faced with the risk of throwing additional good money after bad by continuing its relationship with the debtor. It is often the case that these same suppliers, who supported the debtor through its bankruptcy case, will find themselves a defendant in what is commonly called a “preference action”—a suit brought under Section 547 of the Bankruptcy Code1—leaving the supplier to ponder how it could be left “high and dry” on its pre-petition claim against the debtor and still be subject to a lawsuit for payments received within 90 days of the petition date.2 Preference actions are frustrating, inconvenient, and can be, based upon the amounts involved, detrimental to your own company.

This article serves as a refresher on the purpose of preference actions, the elements of a prima facie preference action, and the various defenses that your company may have to a preference action. While not all companies are alike, and you should contact a bankruptcy professional to discuss this further, this article will briefly discuss some strategies to protect yourself against future preference actions with your existing business relationships.

There are two goals of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The first is to provide a debtor with a “fresh start.” The DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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second is to ensure that similarly situated creditors are treated fairly and equally in a transparent process. Preference actions are tied to the second of these goals. The 90-day period prior to a bankruptcy is deemed by the Bankruptcy Code to be a per se insolvent time for the debtor. The Bankruptcy Code creates a bright line rule allowing a debtor to recover from its creditors payments it made to those creditors in the 90-day period, assuming they meet all the elements of the cause of action.3 The purpose of these actions is to recover all the monies that were paid out to creditors that took advantage of the debtor’s slide into bankruptcy and received payments that were non-ordinary in order to maximize their personal recoveries and to distribute those funds fairly and equally among all similarly situated creditors.

Generally, the debtor (or trustee) needs to prove the following in its case in chief: • The payment must be to or for the benefit of a creditor and made on account of an antecedent debt owed by the debtor before such transfer was made; • The payment must be made when the debtor was insolvent; • The payment must be made on or within 90 days before the date of the bankruptcy filing for most creditors; and • The payment must enable the creditor to receive more than it would have received if the case were a bankruptcy case under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code (a liquidation), the transfer had not been made, and such creditor received payment to the extent of Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code.

There is a host of case law surrounding the above elements of Section 547 of the Bankruptcy Code, and a debtor’s failure to prove each of these elements can serve as a viable defense to a preference action. While that discussion falls outside the scope of this article, there are affirmative defenses to preference actions that are discussed below.

The Bankruptcy Code provides a creditor-defendant with various affirmative defenses to a preference action. The MCCA.COM

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Jennifer Hoover and Michael J. Barrie

more common of these defenses are discussed in this article.

One such defense is the “subsequent new value defense.”

That defense allows a defendant to take a dollar-for-dollar credit against the alleged preferential transfers for certain new value extended after an alleged preferential payment was made. For example, if a creditor received a payment of $1,000 from the debtor within 90 days of a bankruptcy filing, and thereafter shipped $800 in goods to the debtor that remained unpaid as of the date of the bankruptcy filing, that creditor’s preference exposure will be reduced to $200. A creditor’s provision of new value is the most effective defense to a preference action and the simplest to prove.

A second affirmative defense is the “ordinary course of business defense.” Where a creditor has a history with the debtor, and the debtor has made the alleged preferential MCCA.COM

payments in accordance with its typical business practices with that creditor (or typical business practices of the industry), then those payments should be protected from a recovery by the debtor. The ordinary course of business defense, however, may not be available where a creditor takes unusual steps to collect those funds (even if they are paid in traditional terms), such as where a creditor makes multiple or harassing calls to the debtor or pressures the debtor for payments. But, where a debtor pays within terms and in a relatively routine manner, those payments should be shielded from attack.

The contemporaneous exchange for new value is a third affirmative defense. If you deliver goods to a debtor and then receive a payment nearly simultaneous with the delivery of those goods, it may be considered a contemporaneous exchange for new value which are immune from preference attack.

The above are only a few of the affirmative defenses that are available to shield a creditor from preference exposure.

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THERE ARE TWO GOALS OF THE UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY CODE. THE FIRST IS TO PROVIDE A DEBTOR WITH A “FRESH START.” THE SECOND IS TO ENSURE THAT SIMILARLY SITUATED CREDITORS ARE TREATED FAIRLY AND EQUALLY IN A TRANSPARENT PROCESS.

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Knowing the elements of a preference case and these affirmative defenses can serve to better protect a creditor from preference exposure. A creditor examining its trade dealings and credit policies should consider the following: • Establish a credit limit for each of your customers, that is, without exception, not exceeded. This will limit your potential preference exposure because you will never receive a payment greater than the amount of the capped receivable.

• Explore your rights to become a secured creditor. If you are selling inventory and your customer has uncertain or questionable financials, sell that inventory on a consignment basis and establish a security interest in the goods.

• Obtain a letter of credit. Drawing on a letter of credit to pay for the goods and services sold to a customer will not be subject to preference attack.

• Explore your lien rights if you are in an industry that allows you to establish liens to enforce payment.

• Take a security deposit. Holding a security deposit will offset against any balance that might be owed and is certainly helpful. While there are rules about when you can and cannot setoff funds when you hold the security deposit, holding a security deposit will certainly provide leverage in a preference case.

• Consider dealing on a cash-only basis. To the extent that you receive checks from a customer, deposit the checks immediately. Holding checks risks greater preference exposure as courts look to the date that the checks cleared the debtor’s account to determine whether the payment fell within 90 days of the bankruptcy filing.

• Keep your dealings with customers ordinary. Explore whether the payment terms you have extended to your customers are ordinary in the industry.

• Take prepayments. Prepayments cannot be subject to preference exposure because there is no antecedent debt DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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on which they are made.

• Watch you customer’s financials. Most importantly, keep

on top of your customers and apprised of their financial situation. If their receivables start to climb, ask for the company’s financials. If they are distressed, limit their abilities and ask them to prepay accounts.

These are only a few of the many issues that arise in connection with a preference defense. We encourage you to speak to your bankruptcy professional on how to tailor your own business dealings so that you are dealing with these issues on the front end as opposed to facing a lawsuit on the back end, as “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” D&B

11 U.S.C. §§101 et seq.

This question – “[w]hy is there a preference law” was analyzed at length in an opinion issued by Judge Sontchi in In re Sierra Concrete Design, Inc., 463 B.R. 302 (Bankr. D. Del. 2012). The Sierra decision serves as a primer on preference law, with the Court ultimately finding that the answer to the foregoing question “lies in the answer to another question—why is there a bankruptcy law?” Sierra, 463 B.R. at 304. The reader is directed to the Sierra opinion for an easy primer on preference law and its purposes.

3 See id.

1 2

Additional Information

For more information, please contact Jennifer R. Hoover at 302.442.7006 or jhoover@beneschlaw.com or Michael J. Barrie 302.442.7068 or mbarrie@beneschlaw.com.

For more information about our firm’s diversity eff orts, please contact Diversity & Inclusion Committee Chair E. Mark Young at myoung@beneschlaw.com or 216.363.4518 or Co-Chair James L. Ervin, Jr. at jervin@beneschlaw.com or 614.223.9325.

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IN CLOSING...

Steve Zack is a specialist in civil trial law. He has represented Florida’s former Governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham as general counsel; the Florida Senate; the Florida Department of Professional Regulation; national clients such as Philip Morris and the National Geographic Society; and former Vice President Al Gore in the trial of Bush v. Gore.

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Q

Why did you become a lawyer? Specifically, why did you focus on corporate litigation?

As a refugee of the Fidel Castro regime, I saw what happened when rights were taken away and liberties were lost. It was a helpless feeling I never wanted to experience again and from which I wanted to protect my loved ones. I am a trial lawyer, not a corporate lawyer, but I litigate cases on behalf of and against, many major corporations.

What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn from it?

I believe that as you get older you get better at listening to and taking the advice of others. I have been fortunate to acquire this gift with the benefit of time.

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You have held several leadership positions.

You were the youngest president of the Florida Bar. You were the first Hispanic president of the American Bar Association. What makes you a great leader?

When faced with challenges, I have learned to build consensus and follow with quick action, but I haven’t done it alone. Through these various associations, I have had the opportunity and privilege of working with great people: lawyers, judges, bar leaders, law students, and many individuals who care about the future of our profession, our communities, and the world. True leaders work as a team with others to achieve our common goals.

The Hispanic population is increasing the fastest out of any U.S. demographic yet Hispanics are not becoming a lawyers at the same rate. Why is this a problem? How do you propose to fix it?

I will continue to use my voice to help promote diversity in the legal profession, by promoting awareness and emphasizing the importance of law in the world in which we live. I will also continue to focus on making legal education more affordable. The high cost of law school discourages public service and constrains the pipeline for minority students.

You remain active in the ABA’s Rule of Law Commission. It’s the go-to entity for establishing constitutional rights in other countries. You even spent time in Russia. How did you get involved?

I have always been interested in the international practice of law. As president of the American Bar Association, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with judges, lawyers, and students in over twenty-two countries and was the first ABA president to reach out to Asia to help develop strong relations with the bar associations of Hong Kong, Korea, and Vietnam. The ABA’s Rule of Law Commission currently has five hundred lawyers in over forty countries working together with those countries to promote the rule of law.

You were involved in Bush v. Gore. What was that like?

It was an incredible experience to be in any way part of this historical legal moment. It proved that in the United States when we have a problem we turn to our courts, not to our generals.

What does the future hold for you?

Fortunately, I have family, friends, and partners who support my desire to continue practicing my profession, which I love. My father said, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” I followed his advice and hope to continue to do so. D&B

“AS A REFUGEE OF THE FIDEL CASTRO REGIME, I SAW WHAT HAPPENED WHEN RIGHTS WERE TAKEN AWAY AND LIBERTIES WERE LOST. IT WAS A HELPLESS FEELING I NEVER WANTED TO EXPERIENCE AGAIN AND FROM WHICH I WANTED TO PROTECT MY LOVED ONES.”—STEVE ZACK MCCA.COM

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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COMPILED BY JOSHUA H. SHIELDS

BRYANT L. BREWER

LLOYD JOHNSON

ALBERT PARKER

LISA LINSKY

Counsel, Contracts Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Publisher, Community Leader InsideCounsel

Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary Sunovion Pharmaceuticals

Professor Art Leonard Award Recipient New York City Bar Association

Bryant L. Brewer has joined Kimberly-Clark Corporation as counsel, contracts. In his new role, Brewer will serve as primary and lead legal support for the procurement function. Brewer most recently served as counsel for Lowe’s Companies, Inc. where he provided transactions support for merchandising, marketing, information technology, operations, and new business development. And he previously served as assistant general counselcommercial litigation for Walmart Stores, Inc. Brewer is a graduate of Southern University where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree and Indiana University-Indianapolis where he earned his Juris Doctorate.

Summit Business Media has named Lloyd M. Johnson Jr. publisher and community leader for its InsideCounsel Brand. Johnson has over 30 years of experience, including the creation of this magazine. He also had a hand in the formation of Chief Legal Executive and Litigation Management. More recently, Johnson established the highly successful Transformative Leadership Awards, and is working with the InsideCounsel team on a new event, Women, Influence, and Power in the Law, which debuts October 2 in Washington, D.C. He is also CEO of Chief Legal Executive, LLC, a platform that provides unique insight, access, and content to general counsel and chief litigation officers. Johnson earned his J.D. from the University of CaliforniaHastings College of Law.

Albert P. Parker was recently named executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc., located near Boston, Massachusetts. In his new role, Parker is responsible for managing all aspects of the company’s legal affairs, as well as Sunovion’s government affairs group. Over the course of his career prior to joining Sunovion, Parker held roles including founder and principal at General Counsel Legal Advisors LLC, senior vice president and chief counsel at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and partner at Schnader Harrison Segal and Lewis LLP. Parker is active on several professional and community boards, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Penn State University.

Lisa Linsky, a partner in the New York City law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, was awarded the Professor Art Leonard Award by the New York City Bar Association. She will share the award with M. Dru Levasseur of Lambda Legal.

The award is presented by the NYC Bar’s Committee on Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Rights. Linsky, who focuses her practice on complex litigation, including products liability and toxic tort, trials, investigations, and civil rights litigation, has been a passionate advocate for diversity issues and, as McDermott’s first partner-incharge of firm-wide diversity, has played a critical role in advancing the firm’s diversity initiatives. She earned her J.D., with honors, from Pace University School of Law and her B.A., with honors, from Villanova University.

Please send your submissions to our Movers & Shakers feature to joshshields@mcca.com Please include a high-resolution photo (300 dpi or greater), along with an electronic version of the applicable announcement.

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