DIVERSITY & THE BAR
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JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2015
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DIVERSITY & THE BAR
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FEATURES 24 A re You Selecting Qualified, Diverse Mediators?
14 Twelve Guiding Principles to Leading Attorneys Law school teaches many things, but it doesn’t teach you how to be a leader or how to lead other attorneys. How do you lead attorneys who have received so much training, reinforcement and rewards in acting as individuals and getting good at playing zero sum games? Here are 12 guiding principles you can use. BY MIGUEL R. RIVERA SR.
20 Tom Sager: A Career Built by Opening Doors for Others Thomas L. Sager is an attorney who opens doors for others. He enjoys being a mentor to younger attorneys, often taking the initiative to invite them to lunch to discuss their careers. The small gestures speak volumes about his leadership style— he thinks of other people first.
Alternative dispute resolution continues to grow as a viable alternative to judicial proceedings both in the U.S. and abroad. Attorneys are increasingly advising their clients to choose mediators and arbitrators to resolve commercial disputes, typically in a more efficient and economic manner than traditional litigation. In fact, if you are a litigator, chances are you have been involved in this process on numerous occasions. How often, however, have you been before a female or minority neutral? BY MELANIE NATASHA HOWARD
26 S hould Pregnancy Create Special Preferences at Work? A case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in December poses a key and unresolved question about the meaning of the 1978 Pregnancy Disability Act (PDA) that employment and civil rights lawyers are watching. The case pits advocates of greater protection for pregnant employees in the workplace against those who contend that in passing the PDA, Congress didn’t create a law that gives pregnant women what they see as special preferences vis-àvis the whole set of other employees. BY JONATHAN GRONER
BY GLENN COOK
VISIT WWW.MCCA.COM FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION ON OUR EVENTS, AWARDS AND RESEARCH.
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MCCA® Board of Directors
30 NAPABA’s Best Lawyers Under 40 The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association recognizes 21 of the nation’s most distinguished attorneys from around the country and across the legal spectrum. BY AZIZAH AHMAD
38 Indispensable: Five Ways to Be the General Counsel Your CEO Can’t Live Without Learn how to extend your tenure by becoming indispensable to your chief executive officer. BY JENNIFER J. SALOPEK
6 Notes from the President & CEO
12 Diverse Professional Development
8 Lawyers Lantern
Digging into Our Unconscious—Are There Implicit Biases There?
BY LEKAN OGUNTOYINBO
11 Business Transactions
BY GINA ROGAKOS
13 Career Evolution Do You Suffer from Cinderella Syndrome? BY DEANNA D. ALLEN
Crowdfunding: What’s all the Fuss About? BY ALONZO L. LLORENS
Vernon G. Baker, II Former Senior Vice President & General Counsel Meritor Inc.
Carlos Rincon Partner Rincon Law Group PC
Michelle Banks Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer Gap Inc. A.B. Cruz III Executive Vice President and General Counsel Emergent Biosolutions Inc. Clarissa Cerda Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer & Secretary LifeLock Inc. Anthony K. Greene Executive Vice President Jamison Insurance Group Jean Lee Vice President & Assistant General Counsel JP Morgan Chase Legal Department Don H. Liu Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary Xerox Corporation
43 Movers & Shakers
41 Diversity News BY SUE STOFFER AND MELISSA FOSTER BIRD
VISIT WWW.MCCA.COM FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION ON OUR EVENTS, AWARDS AND RESEARCH.
Thomas L. Sager (Ret.) Senior Vice President & General Counsel DuPont Company Partner Ballard Spahr Robin Sangston VP/Chief Compliance Officer Cox Communications Inc. Kenneth S. Siegel Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel Starwood Hotels & Resorts Mary E. Snapp Corporate VP, Deputy General Counsel Microsoft Business Development and Evangelism Lawrence P. Tu Senior EVP and Chief Legal Officer CBS Corporation Neil Wilcox General Counsel—Chase Card Services JP Morgan Chase & Co. Simone Wu Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer Choice Hotels International Inc.
Robbie E.B. Narcisse Vice President of Global Ethics and Business Practices Pitney Bowes Inc. Corporate Legal Department
Joseph K. West President & CEO Minority Corporate Counsel Association
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MCCA® Membership Please visit www.mcca.com/membership for membership information. General Information and Address Changes Send your questions, complaints, and compliments to MCCA®, Kim Howard, CAE, Editor in Chief, kimhoward@mcca.com. Address changes should be sent to membership@mcca.com. Permissions and Reprints Reproduction of Diversity & the Bar in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. To obtain permission, visit www.mcca.com/dbmagazine and click on reprint request.
DEPARTMENTS 40 Survey News You Can Use
Samuel M. Reeves Senior Vice President and General Counsel Walmart U.S. Legal
Hinton J. Lucas (Ret.) Vice President & Assistant General Counsel DuPont Company
COLUMNS
Offering illuminating professional guidance for your career. Maurice Watson
Stuart Alderoty Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel HSBC North America Holdings Inc.
Copyright Copyright® 2015 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 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.
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MCCA® Law Department Members 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. 3M Company
DuPont Company
Liberty Mutual Insurance Company
Rockwell Collins
AARP
Eaton Corporation
Lifelock Inc.
Rolls Royce North America Inc.
Accenture LLP
Eli Lilly & Company
LifeVantage Corporation
Rosetta Stone Inc.
AECOM
Entergy Corporation
Liquidity Services Inc.
S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.
Allstate Insurance Company
Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
Macy’s Inc.
Sara Lee Corporation
Altria Client Services
Exelon Business Services Company
MAHLE Industries Incorporated
Scripps Networks Interactive Inc.
American Airlines
Fannie Mae
ManpowerGroup
Sears Holding Company
American Express Company
Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh
Marriott International Inc.
Sempra Energy
MassMutual Financial Group
ServiceMesh Inc.
Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco
McDonald’s Corporation
Shell Oil Company
Medifast Inc.
Sony Electronics Inc.
Merck & Co. Inc.
Southeastern Freight Lines Inc.
MetLife
Southern California Edison Company
Microsoft Corporation
Spanish Broadcasting Systems Inc.
MillerCoors
Staples Inc.
Mondelez International - [Formerly Kraft Foods Inc.]
Starbucks Coffee Company
Morehouse College
Synopsys Inc.
Morgan Stanley
Tanenbaum Harber of Florida LLC
Nabholz Construction Services
Target Corporation
National Grid
Tessera North America Inc.
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company
The Brookings Institution
Navistar Inc.
The Clorox Company
Neighborhood Defender Service
The Coca-Cola Company
AON Corporation AT&T Corporation Avis Budget Group Bechtel Corporation Becton Dickinson and Company BNY Mellon Boehringer Ingelheim USA Corporation Booz Allen Hamilton BP America Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company CALIBR global leadership network Capital Legal Solutions LLC Capital One Financial Corporation Cargill Inc.
Flagstar Bank Freddie Mac Fujitec America Inc. Gap Inc. Genentech Inc General Electric Company General Mills GlaxoSmithKline Goldman Sachs & Co. Google Inc. Graduate Management Admission Council Halliburton Company
Carter’s Inc.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
The Church Pension Fund
Catalent Pharma Solutions
Herbert L. Jamison & Co. LLC [Jamison Insurance Group]
CH2M Hill
Hewlett-Packard Company
New York Life Insurance Company
The Conference Board Inc.
Chevron Corporation
H.J. Russell & Company
Newegg Inc.
The Vanguard Group Inc.
Choice Hotels International Inc.
Honda North America Inc.
NORCAL Mutual Insurance Company
The Walt Disney Company
CIGNA Corporation
Honeywell International
Northrop Grumman Corporation
The Williams Companies Inc.
CITGO Petroleum Corporation
Huntington Ingalls Industries
Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited
Towers Watson
Colgate-Palmolive Company
IBM Corporation
Office Depot Inc.
Tyson Foods Inc.
Compass Group The Americas
Ingersoll-Rand PLC
Pacific Gas and Electric Company
UBS AG
ConAgra Foods Inc.
Intel Corporation
Pepco Holdings Inc.
UnitedHealth Group
ConocoPhillips
International Paper Company
PepsiCo Inc.
United Parcel Service
Cox Communications Inc.
J.P. Morgan Chase Bank NA
Pfizer Inc.
United Technologies Corporation
Crawford & Company
JC Penney Company Inc.
Pitney Bowes Inc.
U.S. Foodservice Inc.
Darden Restaurants Inc.
JetBlue Airways Corporation
Porzio Life Sciences LLC
Verizon Communications
DC Water and Sewer Authority
JM Family Enterprises Inc.
PPG Industries Inc.
Walmart Stores Inc.
Deere & Company
Johnson & Johnson
PRAXAIR Inc.
Waste Management
Dell Inc.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.
Premier Media Inc.
WellPoint Inc.
DHL America
KeyCorp
Prudential Financial
Wells Fargo & Company
Diageo North America Inc.
Law School Admission Council
Quest Diagnostics Incorporated
Xcel Energy Xerox Corporation
Leading Educators
RBS Americas
Dow Corning Corporation
Leidos - [Formerly SAIC]
Reckitt Benckiser Inc.
Xylem Inc. (Formally ITT Corporation)
Duke Energy Corporation
Leo Burnett Company Inc.
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Yazaki North America Inc.
Dignity Health
For details on MCCA Membership, please visit www.mcca.com/membership 4 DIVERSITY & THE BAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
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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. Alchemy-Partners PC
Goldberg Segalla LLP
Peter Law Group
Alexander & Associates
Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP
Phelps Dunbar LLP
Alvarez Arrieta & Diaz-Silveira LLP
Griffith Sadler & Sharp PA
Pinckney Harris & Weidinger LLC
Anderson Kill PC
Hamilton Miller & Birthisel LLP
Polsinelli PC
Archer & Greiner PC
Helms & Greene LLC
Porzio Bromberg & Newman PC
Arent Fox LLP
Hinckley Allen & Snyder LLP
Quarles & Brady LLP
Arrastia & Capote LLP
Hughes Roch LLP
Quintairos Prieto Wood & Boyer
Axiom
Husch Blackwell LLP
Rivero Mestre LLP
Baldassare & Mara LLC
Ice Miller LLP
Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff lLP
Innis Law Group LLC
Roig Tutan Rosenberg Martin & Stoller PA [Formerly Infante Zumpano]
Berger Singerman LLP
Jeffrey Samel & Partners
Rooney Rippie & Ratnaswamy LLP
Beveridge & Diamond PC
Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck LLP
Sanchez & Amador LLP
Blank Rome LLP
Kenyon & Kenyon LLP
Bond Schoeneck & King PLLC
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP
Sanchez-Medina Gonzalez Quesada Lage Crespo Gomez & Machado LLP
Bressler Amery & Ross PC
King Branson LLC
Bricker & Eckler LLP
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Brown Law Group
Kramer & Amado PC
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC
Kumagai Law Group PC
Butler Snow O’Mara Stevens & Cannada PLLC
Kumar Prabhu Patel & Banerjee
Calfee Halter & Griswold LLP
Leader & Berkon LLP
Cavitch Familo & Durkin Co. LPA
Lim Ruger & Kim LLP
Christian & Small LLP
Littler Mendelson PC
Clifford Chance U.S. LLP
Littleton Joyce Ughetta Park & Kelly LLP
Cohen & Gresser LLP
Loeb & Loeb LLP
Cooley LLP
Lowe & Associates LLC - Counsellors & Advisors
Cottrell Solensky & Semple PA
Marrero & Wydler
Courington Kiefer & Sommers LLC
Martin & Martin LLP
Cozen O’Connor
Maynard Cooper & Gale PC
Crumbie Law Group LLC
McGuireWoods LLP
Davis & Gilbert LLP
Meckler Bulger Tilson Marick & Pearson LLP
DeMahy Labrador Drake Victor & Cabeza (DLD Lawyers)
Messner & Reeves LLC
Dickstein Shapiro LLP
Miller Law Group
Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP Duane Morris LLP
Montgomery Barnett Brown Read Hammond & Mintz LLP
Elliott Greenleaf
Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP
Wong Fleming PC
Epstein Becker & Green PC
Moritt Hock & Hamroff LLP
Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor LLP
Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP
Morris James LLP
Zuber Lawler & Del Duca LLP
Fish & Richardson PC
Nemeth Burwell PC
Zupkus & Angell PC
Fitzpatrick Cella Harper & Scinto
Nicolson Law Group LLC
Florio Perrucci Steinhardt & Fader LLC
Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC
Gaffney Lewis & Edwards LLC
Patton Boggs LLP
GibbsWhitwell PLLC
Pepper Hamilton LLP
Saul Ewing LLP Schiff Hardin LLP Shella Harris and Aus PC Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert LLC Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP Snell & Wilmer LLP Steptoe & Johnson LLP Steptoe & Johnson PLLC Stevens & Lee Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth PC Sughrue Mion PLLC Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP The Goldstein Environmental Law Firm PA The Willis Law Group Troutman Sanders LLP Vinson & Elkins LLP Waas Campbell Rivera Johnson & Velasquez LLP Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP
Miles & Stockbridge PC
Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP Willenken Wilson Loh & Delgado LLP Winston & Strawn LLP
**Minority or Women-Owned Law Firm
For more information, contact David Chu, MCCA’s Vice President of Membership & Development, at 202-739-5906 or membership@mcca.com. MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 5
Notes From the President & CEO
A Time for Change THIS IS THE TIME OF YEAR when many of us make and hopefully implement our resolutions for the new year. It’s considered a time that we can start fresh. We are often hopeful at what the new year and its possibilities can bring forth. This issue showcases not only an expanded content direction for Diversity & the Bar, but provides insight into the best of the best. Whether it’s showcasing NAPABA’s Best Lawyers Under 40, learning about leading teams of attorneys or finding out how MCCA Founding Member Tom Sager has always opened doors for others, we find this issue bursting with content that can inspire our efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace. We have added regular columnists who are in our legal profession. Their insight can be extremely valuable to improving your practice of law. We hope that you agree. Another change is our new digital platform for the magazine available at www.mcca.com/dbmagazine. Our switch means that navigating the magazine’s content online is easier. The navigation bar on the left side allows you to go quickly to any content you may find most interesting. The share function now allows you to post an article to a variety of social networking sites or email it to a colleague. For those of you involved in social media, we ask that you share our content so that others know more about us. Not going to be online for a while, but want to read D&B? No problem. You can download the entire issue to your desktop and read if offline. Need to search for a past article? You can do that, too. We’ve archived the 2014 issues and the previous years when we produced digital issues. When our app is available in the Apple, Google and Amazon stores, we will notify you. As we continue to expand our digital content strategy, we will launch a daily aggregated customized enewsletter delivered directly to you. No matter your area of expertise, you customize the content you receive based on your areas of interest. If you don’t find it valuable, you can unsubscribe. We believe this information will be helpful in your legal practice and in
your diversity and inclusion efforts. As consumers of information, we spend more time online than ever before. We have decided to discontinue printing Diversity & the Bar. This was not a decision easily made. We are a small organization and are lucky to have a magazine like this. We still want to showcase and expand its content. For now, it will be in a digital format. To make it convenient for you and to communicate when the issue is live on our site, we will send you an email highlighting the content in our new issue. If you are not an MCCA member or FAN (Firm Affiliate Network), this will be your last printed issue. We value your readership and hope that you find the content useful. If you still want access to the content, you will have to join MCCA at www.mcca.com/membership. If you want to know whether your law department or law firm belongs to MCCA, you can view those names on the link above and click on the Membership List or FAN List. If you still are not certain if you receive emails from MCCA, please email membership@ mcca.com and we can verify your legal department or law firm’s membership for you and add your contact information to the account if necessary. Finally, I am extremely proud of the first of what will be several MCCA research projects for 2015. The newly launched “Tracking the Integration of the Federal Judiciary” found at www.mcca.com/research is an interactive web portal that provides historical and real-time information on minority Article III judges that is searchable in a number of ways including by district, circuit and president. We believe you will find it to be a useful resource. Thank you for your continued support of MCCA. We can’t reach our goals without you. JOSEPH K. WEST President & CEO MCCA_law
Publications Staff President & CEO Joseph K. West Founder and Publisher Emeritus Lloyd M. Johnson Jr.
Advertising M.J. Mrvica Associates Inc. Design/Art Direction BonoTom Studio Inc.
Editor-in-Chief Kimberly A. Howard, CAE
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MCCA® Staff Shikha Bhatnagar Mahzarine Chinoy David Chu Donna Crook Charles Hollins Aracely Muñoz Petrich Andrea Pimm
www.facebook.com/mcca.law
Erratum In the Nov/Dec print issue on page 45 in the article “Tracking the Integration of the Federal Judiciary,” we incorrectly listed the number of Caucasian Supreme Court Justices. We have updated the digital edition to reflect the correct information. We apologize for this error.
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Save the date
MCCA General Counsel Summit (Formerly the General Counsel Invitational Summit)
May 6 - 9, 2015
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
The GCS oers you opportunities to network in an intimate, relaxed fun setting which creates an atmosphere that fosters business development and key learning. In-house counsel discuss key concerns in an open-dialogue setting.
Make your CLE experience count! For more information regarding participation and schedule of events, visit www.mcca.com/gcs
LAWYER’S LANTERN
Maurice Watson By LEKAN OGUNTOYINBO MAURICE WATSON HAS ALWAYS BEEN a bit of an anomaly. He was the first African-American to graduate from the Barstow School, one of the oldest private independent schools in the Midwest. He went on to graduate from Harvard College and later Harvard Law School. In 2012, he became the first African-American to head a major law firm in Missouri when he was elected chairman of Husch Blackwell. Husch Blackwell is among the largest law firms in Missouri and ranked 10th in gross revenues in 2013. Watson, 56, is currently the only African-American chairman of an AmLaw 200 law firm, following in the footsteps of John Daniels, chairman emeritus of Quarles & Brady. Recently released data show that although the number of Asians and Hispanics at the nation’s blue chip law firms is rising, the number of African-Americans continues to decline. African-Americans make up 3 percent of attorneys at large law firms and only 1.9 percent of partners. Tell us about growing up in Kansas City. Who were some of your major influences? How did they help mold you into the man you’ve become? I grew up in a working class family. My father was a maintenance worker for the Ford Motor Company. My mother worked for the state. They both had longevity on their jobs. My dad died when I was 13. At the time of his death he had been with Ford for decades. My mother, upon her retirement in her 60s, had been with the state for over 40 years. While I come from a family that is not high income, it was a family that had economic stability, which I think is lacking in many urban families today. I was extremely blessed to have the stable and secure home life necessary to do well in school and
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to do well in life. I had an upbringing that created in me the self-confidence to do well in a world that is extraordinarily competitive and increasingly so. I was educated in the Kansas City school district. At that time, its historic extensive desegregation plan was not yet in effect. In the beginning, I attended [racially] mixed classes and schools. But by the time I went to middle school, my school was racially isolated, 100 percent African-American. In the public schools, I had some extraordinarily good teachers. I also had some exceptionally poor teachers. There was a lack of consistency. Nevertheless, those schools provided me with the self-confidence and preparation to build on. I got a very strong foundation that was reinforced by parents who were upwardly mobile and had high expectations
for me. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t go to college. So many of our kids today do not have those kinds of aspirations. Their parents do not have the kind of expectations mine had for me. Growing up as a black child in a strong family I also had a strong connection with the church. Historically, the black church has had a tremendous positive influence on young people. It has provided the context in which black youngsters developed strong spirit, mind and character. The church gave me rich opportunities for leadership in organizations and clubs. As kids, we would have competitions where we had to demonstrate mastery of Biblical scholarship by reciting scriptures from memory before large groups of adults. All of those activities involved the cultivation of the mind and character. Why did you choose law as a profession? I had an interest in public policy and world issues. I’ve always had an interest and skills in verbal and written communication and an appreciation for the power of persuasion through words. There’s no better profession to use those skills than law. What factors have accounted for your success? What hurdles have you faced? One of the words that best describes my success is grit. It really consists of perseverance, self-discipline and the ability to defer gratification for the accomplishment of a long-term goal. It consists of having an independent spirit and doing what is right and appropriate for you rather than following others. My mother always said, “Be skeptical of what the crowd is doing. If a crowd is going right, you better go left.” You’ve got to think for yourself. Throughout my life, I have asked, “Is this the right thing for me?” As for the biggest hurdles, I think it is hard flourishing in any context where you feel isolated, where you feel you are the only one. From the time I was a child, I kind of felt I didn’t fit in with everyone else. That may have prepared me for being the only one or one of a few. Many women and minorities in big law firms feel isolated. They do
One of the words that best describes my success is grit. It really consists of perseverance, self-discipline and the ability to defer gratification for the accomplishment of a long-term goal. not feel deeply integrated. Because of that, they do not persevere. Instead, they hold back. Throughout their careers in law firms, they feel like outsiders, that people don’t want them there. It’s hard to be successful when you feel isolated and unwelcomed. I have been fortunate to have the resilience where I may be the only one but I resolve to persevere and refuse to allow others to discourage me. If you’re persistent, the group will eventually relent and recognize that this guy is not going anywhere, let’s bring him in. Throughout my life, I have understood what it means to be an outsider. I’m gay. As a gay person, I don’t really fit in. Kids sensed I was different. To survive those experiences of being excluded or teased, you must have resilience. You build grit. Being an outsider can be an obstacle, but it can be beneficial in that you learn to succeed in spite of being viewed as an outsider. These are tough times for the legal profession. What are some of the biggest challenges Husch Blackwell continues to face? What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishments as chairman? Our law firm is facing the necessity to reinvent ourselves. And we are not unique in this regard. Our industry is confronting change. We are a 600-lawyer firm. It’s hard to reinvent such a large, long-established organization. We are confronting the critical question of how do we become more competitive and how do we differentiate ourselves in an over-crowded market. Our strategy is to MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 9
LAWYER’S LANTERN continued
Our industry has been studying this problem of underrepresentation of women and minorities for more than 20 years and sufficient progress has not been made. We need to figure this out and get on with it. deliver more value to our clients because we have always had quality lawyers, and we still do. Well, many big firms like ours have quality lawyers. We are focused on bringing industry-specific depth and knowledge. We know the business and expertise of our clients. It involves learning about the business. It involves regularly educating ourselves about what’s going on in the business and becoming thought leaders. We are also focusing more intensely on being a more diverse law firm with more opportunities for women and minorities. When I first became chairman, we had no women on the executive board. Now, 30 percent of the executive board is made up of women. There is a need to bring more women and minorities into equity partnerships. We have a long way to go, but we’re making progress. Our industry has been studying this problem of underrepresentation of women and minorities for more than 20 years, and sufficient progress has not been made. We need to figure this out and get on with it. The number of African-American associates and partners at law firms remains low. What barriers to success continue to confront African-American lawyers who work at law firms? It’s a social isolation issue. We know how to bring them in. The question is: What happens next? Law firms lose more women and minorities (and this is our experience as well at Husch Blackwell) than white males in the first two to three years. I think that is because we have not done an effective job in onboarding. Are they integrated in teams from the
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very beginning? At Husch Blackwell, we’re moving away from the notion of mentors to coaches and sponsors. Do they have effective coaches and sponsors from the very beginning? If there’s nobody looking out for you, you will not make progress. Coaching involves intense, uncomfortable development. You have to have someone who is highly critical and highly demanding and have a lot of trust that they are doing this in your best interest. When you bring people into the firm and you’re not able to build that kind of relationship, the probability of longtime success is poor. At Husch Blackwell, we just initiated a sponsorship program. Each member of the executive board is committed to coach and sponsor a senior associate or junior partner to support them in becoming leaders in the firm, profession and community. The objective is for these protégés to build deep, productive relationships with clients and prospective clients and develop their own brand and reputation for attracting and maintaining good business. There are certain habits of high performance that will sustain success. What advice do you have for lawyers who aspire to rise as high as you have? First, engage in careful self-examination. You’ve got to decide what you view as your real purpose in life and in your career. Where do you want to go with your career? Just because others want to go to a big law firm does not mean it’s the right thing for you. Figure out what will work for you based on your interests, passions and aspirations. One size certainly does not fit all. The development of a career is a long-term proposition. Very few people have overnight success in our profession. It’s a long-term investment. It can be frustrating. But resilience is essential. Without resilience, you can’t have success. Every successful person I’ve ever known, including me, has faced failure. You cannot allow one failure to derail your success. D&B LEKAN OGUNTOYINBO (oguntoyinbo@gmail.com) is a
freelance journalist based in Columbia, Mo.
BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS
Crowdfunding: What’s All the Fuss About? By Alonzo L. Llorens ACCESSING CAPITAL CAN BE A CHALLENGING endeavor for companies under any circumstances. This is particularly so for startup and early-stage entities. However, once the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issues its final rules with respect to crowdfunding, the capital-raising landscape, particularly for startup and early-stage entities, is expected to vastly improve. Many entrepreneurs view crowdfunding as a gamechanger when it comes to raising capital. So, what’s so special about crowdfunding, and can it really change the game? Crowdfunding is a new and evolving method to raise money using the Internet. It serves as an alternative source of capital to support a wide range of ideas and ventures. Currently, entities and individuals raising funds through crowdfunding typically seek small individual contributions from a large number of people. Finally, crowdfunding has some similarities to crowdsourcing, which is an approach for problem-solving that employs the wisdom of “crowds” of people. Some entrepreneurs already raise capital by using existing crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. So, what is the big deal about awaiting the SEC’s new rules? While it is true that some individuals and companies have been fortunate enough to raise money through crowdfunding, they are not issuing securities as consideration for the contributions. Instead, entrepreneurs give things away,
such as tickets, T-shirts and mugs, to individuals that contribute to their crowdfunding campaign. As you can see, there is no economic incentive for investors to invest in a business under this structure. However, once the SEC’s new rules are adopted, companies can raise capital through crowdfunding by issuing securities in exchange for the investor’s money and not violate the federal securities laws. This pending change to the federal securities laws is a result of the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. The intent of the JOBS Act is to increase American job creation and economic growth by improving access to public capital markets for emerging growth companies. The underlying rule with respect to the sale of securities is that they must either be registered with the SEC or fall within an applicable exemption.
The crowdfunding rules expected to be adopted by the SEC will result in some of the most material changes to the federal securities laws we’ve arguably seen in the last five to seven decades. As you can imagine, the SEC is rightfully ensuring that it provides not only a construct whereby entrepreneurs have a more affordable and efficient way to raise capital, but that it also provides a construct whereby shareholders are protected. This new landscape has the potential to dramatically enhance a business’s ability to raise capital. If this is indeed the net result, then everyone has the potential to win. D&B ALONZO L. LLORENS (allorens@gordonrees. com) is a partner with Gordon & Rees LLP and is a member of the business transactions practice group.
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DIVERSE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Digging Into Our Unconcious—Are There Implicit Biases There? By Gina Rogakos IT IS TEMPTING TO THINK that we do not need implicit bias training. Many well-intentioned people may have this reaction. As lawyers in particular, we are trained to consciously promote fairness, justice and equality. As a result, many lawyers believe they do not require additional training on this topic. What I have learned from personal experience, however, is that you don’t know what you don’t know. So what is implicit bias, and why do we need training? Implicit bias is not discrimination, which involves overt or intentional mistreatment of a person or group based upon a belief of superiority and entitlement over that group. Implicit biases are unconscious, immediate and reactive responses to the unfamiliar. They stem from our frame of reference, which includes our culture, religion, socioeconomic circumstances, gender, sexual orientation, family status and upbringing. As a result of our individual backgrounds, we form immediate, unconscious reactions to the unknown or unfamiliar, a primitive protective measure that is natural. The trouble is that while implicit biases are normal and unconscious, they impact our attitudes, behaviors and actions, which can lead to discriminatory outcomes. Our biases, for example, can lead us to associate with “likes” or people who are familiar. In a business context, this can mean biased recruitment, retention, promotion and unfair work allocation, ultimately resulting in a lack of diversity on teams and in leadership and executive roles. It can also result in unintentional exclusion in formal and informal networking, mentoring and sponsorship.
All of this can compromise teams or organizations. As a result, a comprehensive strategy to uncover and address implicit bias is necessary. At our law firm, we instituted a series of implicit bias training initiatives for all firm members. We began with sessions for management, leaders within the organization and our inclusion and diversity committee members. We then held in-person training sessions with Global Diversity Strategist Laraine Kaminsky, of Global LK, for all firm members at every level of the organization. There were many enlightening moments. Some of my takeaways were: ■■We all have biases or cultural blind spots. We need to stop being defensive about this and just own it. ■■It is our responsibility to become aware of our implicit biases and work to address them so that our interactions and decisions are not clouded by them. ■■Developing an intercultural mindset is a journey, for which there is no “arrival” point. It is one of continuous learning and improvement. If you are interested in delving into your own subconscious and learning more about implicit bias, here are two great places to start: ■■Try the online Harvard Implicit Asso-
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ciation Test, a computer-based program designed to uncover implicit biases in a number of categories. If this peaks your curiosity, the tests are available online free of charge. ■■Attend MCCA’s Academy for Leadership and Inclusion Seminar on Implicit Bias. I attended one led by Joseph West, president and CEO of MCCA, and Aracely Muñoz-Petrich, vice president of strategic development of MCCA. Their tremendous insight and expertise made for an interactive, thought-provoking session. The seminar is free for MCCA members and firms participating in MCCA’s Firm Affiliate Network. More information on the program is available at www.mcca.com/academy. There are many next steps in this continuous journey; however, raising awareness is the first one. We cannot progress if we do not start. D&B GINA ROGAKOS (gina.rogakos@
mcmillan.ca) manages associate programs at McMillan LLP, including recruitment, integration, development, mentoring, advancement and performance management of associates. She sits on McMillan’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee and on the firm’s Women’s Initiative. Prior to her current role, she practiced civil litigation.
CAREER EVOLUTION
Do You Suffer From Cinderella Syndrome? By DeAnna D. Allen PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT is an increasingly common subject of my conservations with a wide variety of lawyers. A common thread of these conversations is that virtually everyone, regardless of seniority level or current career path, is struggling with some aspect of professional development that they deem important. So, for those of you whose professional development journey feels a bit off course, you are in good company. Now, I do not mean this in a misery-loves-company kind of way, but rather in a don’t-be-discouraged-and-keepputting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of way. Just keep moving forward. It sounds like a simple enough plan, right? But, as with many things in the practice of law, the devil is in the details. I think we can all agree that most legal practitioners are adept at putting one foot in front of the other to move toward a goal. For better or worse, the legal profession has more than its fair share of driven, type-A personalities. Such tendencies significantly contribute to the various academic and professional accomplishments memorialized in the frames that hang on our walls and in the customized deal mementos that decorate the office shelves. Yet, despite these innate strengths, I have observed countless lawyers completely relinquish ownership of their career development to the good graces of others. The general thinking seems to be that if you are diligent and timely, produce high-quality work and otherwise keep your nose clean, then your path
naturally will wend toward success. This thinking seems rational, and in many legal environments it is necessary for survival. It was the advice I was given and tried to follow early on in my legal career. But it can lead to what I call the “Cinderella syndrome” for lawyers (both male and female). The problem with the Cinderella syndrome (besides being rooted in a fairy tale) is at least twofold. First, virtually nothing about it requires you (or others) to invest in your development beyond what is necessary for you to perform the given task at hand. Thriving, and in some cases surviving, long-term in the legal profession typically requires more. Second, it gives you permission to transfer too much responsibility for your development to others (e.g., your employer or individuals you work for or with). I am a big fan of employer-sponsored professional development and of mentorship, but odds are that thriving
will require you—not someone else—to take active ownership of your career development. So, if you are living with Cinderella syndrome or some variation of it, here is my recommendation: Keep doing the good things you are doing and, by all means, take advantage of opportunities and guidance available from your employer and colleagues, but do not stop there. Thriving in the practice of law requires a certain mindset—whether you start with a big step or a small step, own your professional development in the ways that you can, and be as deliberate about it as you are about other things that are really important to you. D&B DEANNA D. ALLEN (dallen@cooley.com) is a partner at Cooley LLP and is a member of the intellectual property litigation and patent counseling and prosecution practice groups.
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LEADING ATTORNEYS:
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By Miguel R. Rivera, Sr.
I
HAVE HEARD IT SAID MANY TIMES THAT leading attorneys is like
herding cats. This is usually said at a time of frustration and exasperation. Many lawyers remain individual contributors because they have either never learned what is necessary to lead other attorneys, they have failed after trying briefly to do so or they have avoided it all together. Law school teaches many things, but it doesn’t teach you
how to be a leader or how to lead other attorneys. In fact, law school may actually get in the way of creating good leaders. To be a successful law student you must be intelligent, confident, organized, self-reliant, hard-working and committed. But you also frequently have to be driven, ambitious and highly competitive and act individually to thrive in a world of zero sum games and be comfortable knowing your grade success means someone else’s grade failure (also known as “grading on a curve”). Then, you move out of law school and often go into the highly competitive world of the law firm, where many are hired but so few survive to become partner.
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I have found that this process generally creates highly competitive and ambitious people who are supremely confident in their own opinions and happy to share their opinions with you—people who believe they are almost always right and that if you disagree with them it surely means you are wrong. Our shared experience frequently creates people who do not listen to understand and empathize but instead listen to rebut and win, who demonstrate a tendency to not just win the argument but defeat the person, as well. Too frequently, these are people who generally act alone and not as a team. Put a lawyer like this on a team and he usually must lead the team and the team must follow or he gives up on the team and acts independently. Put two lawyers like this on a team and ask them to lead together and you usually have outright animosity or strong passive-aggressive behaviors—but you don’t have leadership. Speaking generally, when you take the lawyer out of the law firm and put him in a corporate environment, many times you either have a serious mismatch or you have an attorney who will never be a leader. Business schools concentrate on creating leaders, emphasizing and working together as teams. Teams succeed, and individuals do not. The corporate environment rewards those who can play on teams. Corporations are successful because individuals act on behalf of the whole and work in teams that accomplish win-win solutions. How do you lead attorneys who have received so much training, reinforcement and rewards in acting as individuals and getting good at playing zero sum games? I hope to provide some insights into how to lead lawyers. Here are my 12 guiding principles:
1. Check Your Ego at the Door This may sound counterintuitive, but checking your ego at the door serves as an example to others of what you expect from them. Ego gets in the way of so many things. It drives destructive and competitive behaviors that are the antithesis of building good teams and leading by example. When the ego makes the decisions the decision-making is usually selfish, political, self-serving and designed to make the decision-maker look good at the expense of those around him. When the leader checks his ego at the door, others see that he doesn’t have to be the smartest in the room, he doesn’t need to have the last word, he remains silent while others speak, he listens for empathy and information and not for rebuttal, and he lets others get credit. He modifies his opinions to reflect the input of the larger group and compromises positions to account for different viewpoints. Overtime, zero sum games go away, people begin to respect each other’s opinions and the level of anxiety and competition significantly diminishes—or those who simply cannot live under the new order leave, allowing you to replace team members with those who can work and play well with others. Not everyone can adjust to team-based environments in which win-win is the rule and zero sum games are a thing of the past, and that’s OK.
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2. Be Vulnerable Getting to truly know others is an exercise in managed vulnerability. A good leader must learn what makes her people tick. She must learn what motivates them, what they dream about and who they are. You cannot ask others to reveal these kinds of things about themselves if you remain aloof, unreachable and private. Showing vulnerability gives your team permission to be vulnerable, too. It is truly rewarding and amazing to see what happens when lawyers let down their guard, show vulnerability and start bonding as a team. You’ll see that there is more laughter, camaraderie, happiness, relaxation and team-building. Teams cannot form in an environment of fear, anxiety and cold distance. A leader who is vulnerable, shows people how she feels and communicates openly, honestly and genuinely will see her people follow suit.
3. Be Transparent Let your team know why you make the decisions you do. Let them know what you know. Too many leaders use information and the control of information as either a weapon or a badge of power. These leaders keep too many things to themselves, including what they think, what they know and why they act. This kind of leader creates distrust and anxiety. Team members don’t know how to predict the leader’s behavior and decision-making and do not understand why he does what he does. This creates a vacuum of information that is usually filled by inaccurate rumor and innuendo. This is not healthy. A good leader informs, explains and reveals. Don’t wait until the decision has to be made to inform and reveal. Start informing and educating your team well before the decision so that they travel with you along the decision journey and have time to think and adjust to the eventual decision. Revealing and informing creates trust in the leader, helps team members understand how you think and make decisions and gives team
members the chance to predict your behaviors. This gives them a sense of security and predictability. Many times, leaders must make unpopular decisions that will not be supported by everyone on the team. By being transparent, you allow your team members to understand why you made the decision. They may or may not like the decision, but understanding your decision helps the team accept it and allows team members to manage their reactions. They will trust you to do the right thing when they understand your decision-making process. Understanding why and how helps the team accept and trust you as a leader.
4. You Don’t Need to be the Smartest One in the Room As I discussed briefly before, a good leader is one who understands and even expects that she is not always the smartest person in the room. Let your team express its opinions, demonstrate expertise and gain the confidence that comes from being the smart one in the room. If you are so busy trying to show what you know, you don’t have the mental space to lead and deal with issues. You create an environment where others will want to compete with you to show how smart they are. Your silence doesn’t mean you are dumb; it means that you are listening, thinking and effectively allowing your team the freedom to create and contribute to the issues at hand. Leading with silence is sometimes an effective way to achieve your objectives while allowing others to express their opinions.
5. Roll-up Your Sleeves and Work With Them Lawyers generally respect those who “can” and those who “do.” You cannot earn your team’s respect if you don’t show it you “can” and you “do.” Doing this means that you are not afraid to roll up your sleeves and do the work. When you join in and do the work with the team, you give the team a chance to see you work as a team member and not just as the leader. This gives team members an example of what you expect from them and how you want them to act as team members. My rule with my lawyers is that when we are sitting around the table brainstorming, analyzing and problem-solving, there are no hierarchies. When we engage to resolve client issues, I am just another lawyer at the table with an opinion no more valuable than anyone else’s. All voices are welcome, and all opinions have the same weight. This gives everyone the same voice and the same opportunity to impact the eventual decisions and outcomes. It also creates an environment in which everyone feels free to offer opinions without fear they will contradict the leader or anger and upset the leader in a disagreement. There is no fear of the politics that can be present at such times, and most importantly, teams that are free to disagree with the leader and express their opinions are teams that bring the best results and ideas to the client.
Ego gets in the way of so many things. It drives destructive and competitive behaviors that are the antithesis of building good teams and leading by example. 6. Set Clear Expectations and Ground Rules Let your team know what you expect from it and why it is important. When I first became general counsel, I took my lawyers and our entire legal team through an organized process to create a mission and vision statement and six cultural imperatives for the law department. The process was managed by a party outside the law department, and I was a member of the team engaged in the process—but not leading it. We defined what our purpose was and what kind of culture we wanted to create, and I have enforced that ever since. Later, we met, and I discussed with each of them what I expected from them as lawyers and leaders in the company. We discussed how I wanted them to work with one another. We discussed how I expected them to treat and work with our clients. We talked about how I expected them to keep me informed about developments and to brief me on issues. Most importantly, we discussed how I expected them to work with each other and the staff. There were no doubts about what kind of culture we wanted to create and what the ground rules were for their behavior. Each year, we work as a team to create the next year’s strategic objectives and work plans for the department. Our goals and plans are clear and measurable, and we measure each other on our accomplishments in real time. I believe in giving real-time feedback as events occur—good and bad. My objective is to praise publically and coach privately, striving always to be consistent. Lawyers are a rule-driven bunch. Lawyers will remember how you applied the rules and will hold you to what they perceive as precedent. So remember to apply the rules consistently, or be prepared to explain why you have deviated from past practice.
7. Empower Your People and Get Out of Their Way One consequence of setting clear rules and expectations is that it frees you to empower your people and then get out of MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 17
the way. Don’t micromanage. Your attorneys and legal staff are experts in their particular areas of practice, and they know what they are doing. You cannot ever be the expert that they are in their areas of practice. Remember to consistently live within your role as decision-maker, but after you have made a decision about direction and strategy, get out of their way and let them perform. Everyone is entitled to their own style, and part of “getting out of the way,” is letting your attorneys and staff develop their own styles within the culture and rules you have put in place. Don’t impose your particular style on your team members, let them do the work their way. This sometimes means letting them find their own voice when they write and present. I don’t make nonsubstantive changes to a memo or letter. Just because I would say it differently doesn’t mean I should change the language they chose to use, so long as the overall objective is being met and their choice of language and style is effective. Empowering your people gives them confidence and trains them to be self-sufficient when you are not there or are otherwise engaged. You want your people to understand the rules, feel empowered, be able to predict what you would do and how you would react, so that when time is of the essence and they cannot reach you and a decision must be made, they act effectively, efficiently and in ways you will be proud to approve after the fact.
8. Deal With Issues Directly and Privately Regardless of how effective a leader you are, you will have people issues. Sometimes personalities don’t mix well, people get angry, people say things they shouldn’t or performance is not what it should be and mistakes are made. It is important to address these issues quickly, directly and honestly. Your team is comprised of adults, so treat them as such, and sit down with them when they make mistakes. Address the mistake in a manner that focuses on improvement and correction and not on blame. Blame creates defensiveness, while focusing on error correction and coaching for improvement focuses on cause and usually results in thoughtful introspection. You will be surprised how well your team will react when your focus is on correcting errors and improving performance rather than blame. Usually, after sufficient time to correct the errors, learn from the mistakes and improve process, your team will come to you to address its responsibility. Use these times to give direct feedback, allowing your people to be creative enough to sometimes make mistakes but learn so that the same mistakes are not repeated. This doesn’t mean that you do not hold people accountable for their actions; it means that in real time your focus is on correcting the errors, mitigating the impacts and improving process. When the time is right, direct personal feedback in private to hold them responsible. They will appreciate this
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Empowering your people gives them confidence and trains them to be self-sufficient when you are not there or are otherwise engaged. approach, and this offers the best chance of ensuring the error is not repeated. Repeated errors lead to correction and even discipline. When disciplining, be sure the punishment fits the error, and be consistent in your application of discipline. Be clear about what the mistake was and why the discipline is required. Timeliness, clarity and directness are critical to effective discipline.
9. Give Away Credit Lawyers want to be recognized for their work, and giving away credit when credit is due is part of being an effective leader of lawyers. Too many times leaders take the work of their subordinates and put their face and voice to that work when presenting to the corporate leadership. Not allowing your team to present its work to corporate leadership and get important face time with management will result in animosity and resentment. Let your team be the face and voice of the law department. This builds experience and confidence and improves performance. It gives you the chance to evaluate the team’s performance and allows team members to get the credit they deserve for their hard work. They will appreciate you for it. I always like to give credit away in a public manner, thanking people for their hard work in front of the whole team or when meeting with management. I want my team to be
respected and trusted by my clients. I want it to have direct relationships with management and the leadership of the company. This makes my team more effective and improves the delivery of legal services and advice. Giving away credit facilitates this process.
10. Challenge Your Lawyers Give your lawyers difficult assignments and stretch targets and work with them to achieve these goals. Lawyers grow in confidence and experience when their abilities are stretched and they complete assignments successfully. Coach them when they are stressed, and use the lessons learned in team-building to help them achieve the client’s objectives in a confident, calm and team-based manner. Help your lawyers see that when working on tough assignments, they should be comfortable seeking the assistance and partnership of their colleagues. Help them learn not to simply hunker down and do the job alone. Expect more from your attorneys than they expect from themselves. Too many times attorneys get comfortable within their practice area and expertise. It becomes easy for them to gain confidence and security in what they know but rarely act outside their comfort zones. This is the road to individual performer and not to leadership. Give such an attorney stretch assignments outside his comfort zone, but don’t just leave him to sink or swim. Give private coaching, and suggest that he work with other attorneys on the team to achieve the client’s goals. Success in an area outside his area of expertise will give him the opportunity to work with new clients, on stretch assignments and as a member of a successful team. Using good judgment selecting an appropriate project and team to work with will help him gain comfort outside his comfort zone. Combined with thoughtful coaching, this will usually result in solid growth and the opportunity for him to become more than just an individual performer.
11. Give Your Lawyers a Seat at the Table As I work with the lawyers who help me lead the department, I engage them in all important personnel and strategic decisions. I want them to have a seat at the table, be engaged in how decisions are made and understand the thought processes and attitudes required to get the job done right. I want them to know what I know, see what I see, hear what I hear, feel the pressure and experience the process of making decisions in a high-impact environment. I also want them to see when I make mistakes and have to change direction and admit error. Remember being vulnerable? Giving your attorneys a seat at the table, to watch you at your best and worse, definitely makes you vulnerable. But the lessons learned and the camaraderie achieved by sharing the
pressures and rewards of being in the trenches together bonds you as a team. The best training for leadership is a seat at the table.
12. Always Have Their Backs Practicing law is a stressful, high-pressure and volatile profession. Rarely do clients show much support and thankfulness for the late nights, lost weekends and missed dinners. Clients do notice when it takes too long or when the results are not exactly as anticipated. Many times, attorneys have to give unpopular advice to powerful people used to getting their way and who don’t appreciate being told by some lawyer that there are legal barriers to accomplishing what they want. Clients will complain. Clients will use their political power and influence sometimes in ways that can hurt your lawyers. It’s crucial that you take the heat for your attorneys when they are doing their job and doing it well. If your attorneys come to expect that you will have their backs and that you will be there with them to help guide them through the political minefields, they will spend more time being creative and thinking of ways to achieve the client’s goals than worrying about their jobs.
Leading Is Not Easy Leading lawyers is not an easy task. I began the article by saying that many times people say, “leading lawyers is like herding cats.” It’s actually a lot like leading intelligent, hard-working, driven people who are devoted to the law, their clients and to an intellectual and analytical process of problem-solving taught by law schools and handed down across generations of lawyers. Lawyers work hard. There are natural leaders amongst us. Like many lawyers, I learned to lead by making many mistakes, watching other lawyers make mistakes, working for lawyers who were terrible leaders and being lucky enough to know and work for and with lawyers who were great leaders. Leadership lessons came from the experience of being led and by working on teams. I am honored to lead my group of lawyers and to help motivate and guide them as they grow and learn. I trust that the 12 guiding principles I have outlined here will prove as true to you as they have to me. D&B MIGUEL R. RIVERA SR. is the DSVP –
GC for Payless ShoeSource Inc.
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A Career Built By Opening Doors for Others By GLENN COOK
T
HOMAS L. SAGER is an attorney who opens doors for others. Standing beside a stranger in an elevator, he says, “after you” and waits to leave. He enjoys being a mentor to younger attorneys, often taking the initiative to invite them to lunch to discuss their careers.
The small gestures speak volumes about his leadership style—he thinks of other people first. As the long-time corporate and general counsel for DuPont Co., Sager placed a priority on ensuring that the law firms that worked for the chemical giant reflected the nation’s racial, ethnic and gender diversity. He helped develop the DuPont Legal Model, an industry benchmark and process for law firms to promote diverse and inclusive cultures while redefining how they measure success. “Diversity in your law firm is not something you can check off in a day, a week, a month or even a year,” says Sager, a founding board member of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA). “It’s a journey that needs to be discussed
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or talked about often. It’s a day-to-day commitment that needs to be in place, and it needs to be personal.” Sager retired from DuPont last summer after spending his entire 37-year legal career with the company. Three months later, at age 64, he joined Ballard Spahr as a partner in the firm’s Philadelphia, Pa. and Wilmington, Del., offices. The move from the corporate world to private practice means he no longer is on the MCCA board of directors, but he plans to remain involved with the association. “MCCA has evolved beyond my wildest expectations,” Sager says. “It has become the premier diversity organization in the legal community. It is very gratifying to see how it has grown.”
L-R: Veta T. Richardson, former executive director of MCCA and current president and CEO, Association of Corporate Counsel; Tom Sager, partner, Ballard Spahr LLP; and Joseph K. West, president and CEO, MCCA.
Thoughtful, Humble and Generous Sager’s resume includes a laundry list of awards and honors befitting his illustrious career, which started when he joined DuPont after graduating from law school in 1976. But MCCA colleagues, past and present, point to a host of other intangibles that go beyond his ability to interpret the law or lead a legal team. “Tom is the salt of the earth,” says Darrell Gay, a founding board member of MCCA and a partner at Arent Fox. “He is an absolutely wonderful person to be around and a consummate gentleman with a gentle soul. At the same time, he is a wise, wise man who doesn’t do things because of emotion. He knows what’s necessary to do, what’s important to do, why it’s important and what’s the goal to be achieved. And that’s the way he goes about it.” Joseph West, president and CEO of MCCA, says Sager is a constant “source of advice and counsel.”
L-R: MCCA board member Carlos Rincon, partner at Rincon Law Group PC; MCCA board member Don H. Liu, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, Xerox Corporation; MCCA board member Robbie E.B. Narcisse, vice president of global ethics and business practices, Pitney Bowes Inc.; Tom Sager, partner, Ballard Spahr LLP; MCCA board Chairperson Simone Wu, senior vice president, general counsel, corporate secretary and chief compliance officer, Choice Hotels International Inc.; MCCA board member Anthony K. Green, executive vice president, Jamison Insurance Group; MCCA board member Samuel M. Reeves, senior vice president, general counsel, Walmart U.S. Legal; and Joseph K. West, president and CEO, MCCA.
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“In our profession, there are a lot of people who are extremely capable, well-respected and accomplished attorneys,” West says. “Few people in our profession are utterly decent human beings who are thoughtful, humble and generous. You often don’t see that combination of characteristics rolled into one person, but you get that with Tom.” West, who is the association’s third executive director, met Sager at an MCCA function in 2007. Two years later, the two appeared together on a panel at an American Bar Association meeting in Atlanta, and West “spent the entire time trying to work up the courage to ask him to lunch.” “You can imagine how surprised I was when he came over and invited me to lunch instead,” West recalled at a reception honoring Sager for his work with MCCA. “He told me he had heard about my work, what I was doing and how he was impressed. He instantly became a mentor to me.” Simone Wu, senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary for Choice Hotels International, met Sager when she joined the MCCA board in 2007-08. She calls him “very inspirational” and “extremely passionate about the issues that really matter to him.” “One thing I truly admire about him is his personal touch,” says Wu, who now chairs the MCCA board. “Tom really has an ability when you’re speaking with him to make you feel like you are the most important person he could speak with at that moment. He really draws people in and really focuses on you, and he brings out the best in other people that way.” Wu also points to Sager’s sense of humor. “He has a very dry delivery, and you’re not sure until a few seconds after he says something that you think, ‘oh my God, that’s hilarious,’” she says. True to form, when asked to talk about the MCCA award that bears his name, Sager jokes. “When they said, ‘We want to name the award after you,’ I thought you had to be dead,” he says of the Thomas L. Sager Award, which honors law firms that have demonstrated sustained commitment to improve the hiring, retention and promotion of minority attorneys. “But I agreed to support it because it gave us a means to recognize the firms for outstanding work and advancements in the field and recognize the corporations that support this type of work through their in-house counsel.”
“We Needed a Far More Diverse Team Than We Had” Sager was born in Rhode Island and went to college and law school in North Carolina but has spent the majority of his life in Wilmington, Del. Right after college, he was hired by DuPont and rose through the ranks there. His interest in diversity issues was sparked, he says, by DuPont’s progressive policies and approach. In 1990, the company sent its senior executives for a week of training to help them understand the challenges employees faced in discriminatory work environments. “It was less about analyzing race and gender and more
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“He really draws people in and really focuses on you, and he brings out the best in other people that way.”
about understanding how biases can undermine the effectiveness of the company,” Sager says. “It was the most impactful training I had, and it stuck with me.” As Sager took on more responsibility for litigation and the hiring of law firms that worked on DuPont’s cases, he saw the need for more diversity among legal teams. That was the start of the company’s convergence process, in which DuPont cut the number of firms it worked with from 350 to 34. “I could see that the demographics in our country were changing rapidly,” he says. “We were a large chemical company, and many people didn’t know about DuPont or looked unfavorably on DuPont, so we needed to have a highly energized team that could engage with judges, juries and politicians with a credible story. We needed a far more diverse team than we had.” As part of the convergence process, Sager’s team required firms to have a “demonstrated commitment to the hiring, retention and use of minorities and women in our matters.” That commitment, combined with the demands for increased technology use, strategic partnering and alternative billing arrangements, formed the foundation of the DuPont Legal Model. “Our vision was to focus on sending our business to a much smaller group of law firms that would work as an effective team to achieve mutually beneficial goals,” Sager says. “Meanwhile, our in-house lawyers needed to understand the business and its needs so they could more strategically collaborate with outside lawyers. The in-house lawyer took on a far more strategic and leadership role than they previously had.”
A Trailblazer for Minority Attorneys In 1997, Lloyd Johnson was living in New York City and searching for a way to get corporations to hire more minorities for their legal teams. As the plan to launch MCCA started, one of the first people he reached out to was Sager. “Because of his work and his reputation, Tom brought credibility to a good idea,” Johnson says. “In 2014, when people think about the idea of a national nonprofit that focuses on diversity and the lawyers who work in corporate America, it all makes sense. That wasn’t the case in 1997.” Sager’s involvement, along with that of Gay and others, helped the fledgling organization get off the ground. Johnson and his wife maxed out their credit cards trying to keep MCCA afloat, and Sager says creditors “were chasing us almost every
other day. When they couldn’t find Lloyd they would come after me.” Gay, the Arent Fox partner, says Sager’s calm and professional demeanor was critical during the organization’s early days. “No corporation is ever going to fire a law firm strictly because it doesn’t have a minority lawyer, but Tom was one of the people who helped corporations see the importance of that through his work with DuPont and MCCA,” Gay says. “In many ways, Tom has been a trailblazer and an important trailblazer for minority attorneys in our field.” Johnson says MCCA’s first board recognized that it needed to do three things: establish an industry standard for the hiring of minorities to represent corporations; develop resources, information and best practices for how to do so; and put together a network that was focused solely on minorities in corporate counsel positions. “Those times were wild and crazy,” Johnson says. “But Tom was an understated, highly impactful leader. He is amazing in that he consistently puts the cause, the idea or the movement first and is highly adroit at bringing people together to have a discussion so they can hear each other. And then he marshals all of that conversation into action.” Establishing the award that bears Sager’s name was a huge step forward, says Johnson, who left MCCA as executive director in 2001 but served on the board of directors until 2004. “It’s more carrot than stick because it gives us an opportunity to lift up best practices and recognize corporations that make a positive difference in the areas of diversity,” Sager says. “We have a means to recognize the firms for outstanding work and advances in the field.”
Career Change but Still Helping Sager decided to leave DuPont last summer because the company is spinning off its performance chemicals division into a separate entity, and the two will have separate legal departments. With only 18 months left in his DuPont career— employees must retire at the end of the year they turn 65—he says the timing was right. “The legal department as I once knew it and led it is going to be radically different, and the spinoff will create a wealth of new challenges,” he says. “It was the most appropriate time to leave so they can form another legal team and another legal department under fresh leadership.” Ballard Spahr, which has received DuPont’s “Meeting the Challenge” award 10 times for its commitment to community outreach, diversity and resourceful work, quickly snapped up Sager, who started his new role last September. “I’m enjoying it,” he says, noting his primary focus is on business development. “I believe in this firm, and anywhere I can go to advance their presence by sharing my experience as a general counsel, I’m happy to do it.” While Sager did not work directly with Ballard Spahr until
L-R: Darrell S. Gay, partner, Arent Fox LLP; Tom Sager, partner, Ballard Spahr LLP; Simone Wu, MCCA board chairperson and senior vice president, general counsel, corporate secretary and chief compliance officer, Choice Hotels International Inc.; and Joseph K. West, president and CEO, MCCA.
after he retired, he says his views about the firm were shaped by its dealings with DuPont and by a mock trial it sponsored involving students and Sandra Day O’Connor at a Philadelphia high school. “I was blown away by the students’ talent, and that’s one reason why I feel so strongly about this firm and what it can offer the next generation,” says Sager, who served as one of the trial’s jurors. “The investment you make in young people is your greatest legacy; not awards, positions won or money. They are doing things the right way in developing lawyers for the future.” Over the past two decades, Sager says he has seen slow but steady progress in the hiring of minority attorneys. “It’s positive but incremental at best,” he says. “The recession did not help, and the famous economic crash did not help either. … Only certain visionary firms look at this as an opportunity to help talented women and minorities and give them a career path that is exciting.” Sager believes MCCA provides the vehicle for firms to do just that. Even though his formal tenure on the board is complete, he says he remains committed to the organization he helped found. Typical of his nature, he talks about any future role in an understated manner. “I don’t want to get in the way,” he says, “but I do want to help.” D&B GLENN COOK (glenncook117@gmail.com) is a freelance writer, photographer and publications consultant who lives in Northern Virginia. MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 23
Are You Selecting Qualified, Diverse Mediators? By Melanie Natasha Howard ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION (ADR) continues to grow as a viable alternative to judicial proceedings both in the U.S. and abroad. Attorneys are increasingly advising their clients to choose mediators and arbitrators to resolve commercial disputes, typically in a more efficient and economic manner than traditional litigation. In fact, if you are a litigator, chances are you have been involved in this process on numerous occasions. How often, however, have you been before a female or minority neutral? Particularly when the subject matter of the dispute involves, for example, a high-value breach of contract claim as opposed to a sexual harassment suit against an employer? More often than not, attorneys select older, white, male, retired judges when searching for qualified candidates. 24 DIVERSITY & THE BAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
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These neutrals usually have spent a significant amount of time on the bench settling civil cases and, as a result, have carved out a niche for themselves and gained extensive experience working as mediators and arbitrators in their post-judiciary careers. The problem is there are a number of qualified female and minority neutrals with similar professional backgrounds (e.g., former judicial officers or practitioners with significant settlement experience or subject matter expertise) who are simply not selected. The law firms and companies making the hiring decisions (ADR consumers) continue to appoint white male neutrals at a disproportionate rate, despite advertising their commitment to inclusiveness and diversity in hiring for their own businesses. In doing so, ADR consumers are disregarding the fact that neutral facilitators should be representative of the diverse individuals and organizations that share their tables in the mediation and arbitration process. The term “neutral” is not indicative of a lack of necessity for diversity in ADR. As with other areas of the legal profession (e.g., senior legal positions at law firms and companies, the judiciary, law school admissions), diversity in mediation and arbitration is essential. While ADR may not generally be considered as impactful to society as other forms of dispute resolution, all manner of high-stakes litigation is often
“It is never too late to give up your prejudices.” —Henry David Thoreau
brought to the settlement table, with significant repercussions as to how a party will treat that legal situation in the future. Indeed, many corporations structure their legal strategy on the likely outcome of a settlement, and virtually all contracts have arbitration provisions. A neutral, like a judge, is required to review the facts and law of a matter but must also take the extra step of facilitating negotiations between adverse parties. This is where the diversity of experience and perspective matters. A diverse neutral may also be favorable based upon client demand, for example, where language and cultural differences have previously blocked a resolution. Most neutrals are independent contractors, not salaried employees. ADR consumers’ reluctance to select female and minority neutrals have caused many of them to self-select out after investing significant time and training. Female and minority neutrals must make additional efforts to distinguish themselves and take advantage of networking opportunities in order to raise their profiles. The problems minority mediators deal with are parallel to the catch-22 dilemma that college graduates face: How do you get the job that requires experience when nobody will hire you? In an attempt to level the playing field, the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR) created a National Task Force on Diversity in ADR in 2006. Several companies and law firms—32 listed on its website—have signed a 2013 pledge regarding their “commitment to diversity and inclusion in the selection of neutrals.” Similarly, JAMS (the largest private arbitration and mediation service in the United States) has recently expended significant resources on recruiting both women and people of color, but many of these qualified candidates are infrequently chosen. JAMS has also begun hosting dinner receptions and social events to get female and minority mediators in front of the right people so they will be considered should a case suitable to their skill sets arise. Mark Smalls, JAMS vice president and chief marketing officer, notes that there is a twofold problem concerning supply and demand in the neutral profession. “It really is a career path that people need to prepare for fairly early on, and minorities are less likely to be made aware of this being a viable legal career destination. Additionally, one typically needs to have enough settlement experience in order to parlay that into a successful mediation career,” says
Smalls. “It’s been a bit of an old boys’ club, and law firms and in-house counsel are reticent to take a chance on people they are not familiar with,” adds Smalls. While the CPR and companies sich as JAMS are making efforts to increase diversity in the profession, it is critical that ADR consumers follow suit. Antiquated biases that women and minorities are not as capable as their white male counterparts in managing strong personalities, handling long and hard-fought negotiations, working on cases involving complex financial or corporate governance matters or any number of other ADR-centric issues must be eliminated. Let this be a call to arms for attorneys— change can only be achieved if law firms and companies recognize the problem, understand and accept the need for change, and find ways to ensure a fair neutral selection process that incorporates women and minorities. It is within our power, neutrals and ADR consumers alike, to not allow women and people of color to remain underrepresented in these critical roles. The next time you are headed to arbitration or mediation, consider selecting a qualified female or minority neutral. How do you ensure that well-qualified female and minority neutrals are included on the list? These days, ADR is as much about marketing and advertising as any other business. Accordingly, ADR consumers seeking such services are not relegated to guessing a neutral’s race or gender by name alone, which, of course, is by no means an adequate process. Neutrals often have websites, which include their photographs along with lengthy biographies, which may also indicate participation in any number of minority organizations, foreign language fluency and other additional helpful criteria. ADR consumers may also rely on referrals from colleagues who have previously interacted with the candidate, and can call and speak with the neutral or ADR company directly. It is not difficult to include these simple steps in your selection process. D&B MELANIE NATASHA HOWARD
(mhoward@mrllp.com) is a litigation attorney at the law firm of Michelman & Robinson LLP, where she handles commercial business and white collar matters. Howard is co-chair of the firm’s diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion committee.
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Should Pregnancy Create Special Preferences at Work? By Jonathan Groner
Editor’s note: At presstime the U.S. Supreme Court had not yet reached its decision on this case.
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A
CASE ARGUED BEFORE the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2014 poses a key and unresolved question about the meaning of the 1978 Pregnancy Disability Act (PDA) that employment and civil rights lawyers are watching. The case pits advocates of greater protection for pregnant employees in the workplace against those who contend that in passing the PDA, Congress didn’t create a law that gives pregnant women what they see as special preferences vis-à-vis the whole set of other employees. The litigation arose after Peggy Young, a delivery driver for the United Parcel Service in Landover, Md., became pregnant in 2006. Her medical practitioners advised her, because of her pregnancy, not to lift more than 20 pounds while working. UPS’s employee policy requires its employees to be able to lift up to 70 pounds because they sometimes need to load and unload their vans with packages. Accordingly, Young sought a light-duty assignment for the duration of her pregnancy. She knew that under her union’s collective-bargaining agreement, three categories of UPS employees were eligible for such an assignment: those injured on the job, those considered disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and those who lost their driving credentials for some reason.
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Young reasoned that she was fully able to work her regular job—except for the fact that she was pregnant. Thus, she and her lawyers came to believe denying her light-duty work request would violate the PDA’s requirement that an employer treat pregnant employees the same “as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.” However, the company’s occupational health manager rejected Young’s request. Because a pregnant employee did not fall into any of these three categories of workers entitled to light duty, the company declined to move her to a less physically demanding job. Instead, Young was forced to go on extended leave without pay. She came back to UPS after her baby was born in 2007. Young then sued UPS on a number of grounds, including the PDA, but she lost her case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and, on appeal, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. This past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Young’s appeal in order to decide one interesting and important question of anti-discrimination law that the case raises. The question, as the high court framed it, is whether, and in what circumstances, an employer that provides work accommodations to nonpregnant employees with work limitations must provide work accommodations to pregnant employees who are “similar in their ability or inability to work.” The case was argued on Dec. 3, 2014. The appeals court’s January 2013 unanimous ruling, written by Judge Allyson Duncan, a former attorney at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, rejected Young’s PDA claim on the grounds that in creating its light-duty policy and denying her request for light duty, UPS hadn’t discriminated against pregnant women as a class—either explicitly or implicitly. “No such [discriminatory] policy exists here,” the appeals court wrote. “By limiting accommodations to those employees injured on the job, disabled as defined under the ADA and stripped of their DOT certification, UPS has crafted a pregnancy-blind policy and Young does not contend otherwise. Such a policy is at least facially a ‘neutral and legitimate business practice’ and not evidence of UPS’s discriminatory animus toward pregnant workers.” The court held that if Young had fallen into one of the three categories entitled to light-duty assignments, she would presumably have been granted that type of duty by UPS, whether pregnant or not. Because she didn’t happen to fall into one of those categories, she simply wasn’t entitled to light duty, and the fact that she was pregnant didn’t require UPS to comply with her request for light duty. Young’s lawyers—Sharon Fast Gustafson of Arlington, Va., and Samuel R. Bagenstos of the University of Michigan Law School’s Clinical Law Program—see the PDA’s requirements
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and Young’s case quite differently. They wrote in their Supreme Court brief: “The PDA’s import is plain: When two sets of employees experience similar restrictions on their ability to work—one because of pregnancy and the other because of some other condition— the employer must not give any lesser accommodation to the pregnant workers than it gives to the nonpregnant workers. Legislative history and administrative construction further bolster what the statutory text makes clear. The court of appeals, however, strayed from that plain text.” In making their arguments, Young’s lawyers rely heavily on the so-called “second clause” of the PDA, which is a hotly contested topic in the case. The first clause provides that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination: “The terms ‘because of sex’ or ‘on the basis of sex’ include, but are not limited to, because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions.” That is fairly straightforward: An employer can’t discriminate, directly or indirectly, against pregnant women any more than it can discriminate against all women. The controversial second clause directs that “women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.” Young’s case turns in part on the questions, “What is the meaning of ‘treated the same?’” and “Does the second clause add any further protections to those that are already found in the first clause?” Young’s lawyers relied on the second clause to support their key point: “If Peggy Young’s lifting restriction had resulted from an on-the-job injury, an ADA disability, or a condition that rendered her ineligible for DOT certification, . . . UPS would have accommodated it. But because her restriction resulted from pregnancy, UPS refused to do so. UPS accordingly violated the PDA. . . . By refusing to give Young the same accommodations it gave to other drivers with work limitations, UPS failed to treat her the same as others similar in the ability to work.” And that would be true, Young’s lawyers say, regardless of whether or not UPS intended to discriminate against pregnant women. If there’s a class of employees who can get light duty, and pregnant women’s ability to work is “the same” and pregnant women don’t get light duty, then the employer has violated the law. The argument is that the law doesn’t require UPS to create special accommodations for workers who can’t do their current assignment. But if it chooses to make those accommodations for one group of workers, it can’t exclude pregnant women, as long as their ability to work is “similar.” The 4th Circuit, however, flatly rejected this interpretation
The PDA’s import is plain: When two sets of employees experience similar restrictions on their ability to work— one because of pregnancy and the other because of some other condition— the employer must not give any lesser accommodation to the pregnant workers than it gives to the nonpregnant workers. of the second clause, saying that it creates no new rights or obligations that are not contained in the first clause. “Although the second clause can be read broadly,” the court wrote, “we conclude that its placement in the definitional section of Title VII, and grounding within the confines of sex discrimination . . . make clear that it does not create a distinct and independent cause of action.” The court also noted that a broad reading of the clause would give pregnant women preferential treatment, which it said is contrary to the express wish of Congress. Barry Hartstein, a shareholder and co-chair of the EEO and Diversity Practice at Littler Mendelson, says the appeals ruling makes a great deal of sense. Littler Mendelson is not involved in the Young case. “When Congress passed the PDA,” Hartstein says, “they chose not to create special legislation the way they did with the Americans with Disabilities Act or Age Discrimination in Employment Act. They just looked at the definitions section of Title VII and said that discrimination because of sex
includes pregnancy. The plaintiffs here are trying to argue that the second clause in the definition covering pregnancy is a catch-all for preferential treatment for pregnant workers. It’s as if they’re saying there’s a ‘most-favored-nation’ clause for pregnant women, arguing that they are entitled to whatever the best treatment is that any worker receives doing similar work. This would result in some pregnant women being treated more favorably than other female workers, and that is not what was intended by the statute.” Gustafson, who represents Young, disagrees. “Women should not have to choose between continuing their jobs and continuing their pregnancies when their employers are accommodating other employees with similar work limitations,” Gustafson says. “Pregnancy discrimination is the last untouched frontier in anti-discrimination law.” D&B JONATHAN GRONER (jonathangroner@gmail.com or on Twitter at
@jgronerpr) is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., and a former managing editor of Legal Times. MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 29
NAPABA 2014
BEST LAWYERS UNDER 40 By Azizah Ahmad
THE NATIONAL ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION (NAPABA) honored its 2014 Best Lawyers Under 40 (BU40) at its 26th Annual Convention in Scottsdale, Ariz., this past November. The BU40 recognizes talented individuals in the Asian Pacific American (APA) legal community who are younger than 40 and have achieved prominence and distinction in their respective fields while demonstrating a strong commitment to the community. Each year, NAPABA announces the call for BU40 award nominations, and each year, the pool of nominees is impressive and challenges the BU40 award selection committee to pick from the best of the best. The 2014 class of honorees continues the BU40 legacy of excellence and leadership that is recognized by their peers, colleagues and mentors both within and outside the legal profession. This year, NAPABA honored 21 rising attorneys with the BU40 Award. The 2014 class of honorees are attorneys from a range of disciplines. They include a leading anti-trafficking expert and filmmaker to partners at some of the nation’s largest firms. One of the many things recognizable about the 2014 class is that these lawyers go above and beyond the demands of their jobs and have dedicated their lives to being advocates in their communities. 30 DIVERSITY & THE BAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
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Ivy O. Suriyopas is director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)’s Anti-trafficking Initiative. She has become one of the nation’s leading anti-trafficking advocates and has counseled numerous trafficking survivors. Suriyopas has successfully litigated difficult cases, including Baoanan v. Baja, in which a Filipino consular officer and his wife took advantage of a recent nurse graduate by promising to help find her a job as a nurse. Instead, she was forced to become a domestic worker in the couple’s Manhattan home. Because of the often strong defense of diplomatic immunity, the case was particularly difficult. However, Suriyopas was able to overcome that defense, and the case was favorably resolved in 2011. “Ivy Suriyopas is an outstanding civil rights attorney who has devoted her life to public service and the fight for social justice and equality,” said Margaret Fung, executive director of AALDEF. “She has used her experience providing legal services to trafficking survivors to develop legislative proposals and advocacy campaigns.” Suriyopas co-wrote two manuals on T and U visas, helped with the NAPABA anti-trafficking resolution and is co-chair of the Freedom Network, a coalition of anti-trafficking organizations. Chris Hope is a Canadian attorney whose family history has played a significant role in his career. Along with being a recognized entertainment and intellectual property attorney and serving on the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyer Board, Hope produced and directed a documentary film called “Hatsumi,” which tells the story of his grandmother’s experience during the Japanese-Canadian internment. The film has been critically acclaimed and is scheduled to broadcast nationally in Canada. Hope also sits on a number of other boards, including the board of the Japanese American National Museum, where he is the first non-American board member. One of Hope’s supporters, the Hon. Maryka Omatsu, of the Ontario Court of Justice and a 2013 NAPABA Trailblazer honoree, praises Hope’s work in preserving his heritage for the next generation. “It is critical that NAPABA recognize young lawyers whose work supports justice, equality of opportunity, that are pillars of the NAPABA mandate,” says Omatsu. “Increasing the collective consciousness of our students to prevent anything like the internment from ever happening again is the greatest legacy that North
Americans of Japanese decent can leave to future generations.” Raised in Pakistan, Adeel Mangi studied law at the University of Oxford and received his LLM at Harvard. His accomplishments are unparalleled at the age of 36. He is a partner at the New York office of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, where he became the youngest partner at the age of 32. Mangi focuses on high-stakes litigation and represents several Fortune 500 companies. He has been recognized by the New York Law Journal and MCCA’s Diversity & the Bar as a 2014 Rising Star. His peers have also recognized him for his leadership and dedication to lift a community that is often shunned. “The reality of today’s legal profession is that many young Muslim and South Asian lawyers joined the bar without many role models. Adeel has filled this gap, counseling numerous junior lawyers on how to think about their carriers and navigate the workplace,” said Asim Rehman, president of the Muslim Bar Association of New York and a past BU40 honoree. “There are only a handful of Muslim bar associations across the country, and within their leadership there are only a handful of individuals who are partners at prominent law firms. These are individuals who, on top of their demanding professional schedules, have decided to give back to their communities by lending their personal talents and law firm resources. In this national context, Adeel is not only a rare lawyer, but he is a rare leader.” These are only some of the stories of the individuals that make up the 2014 class of NAPABA’s Best Lawyers Under 40. Although all of their stories could not be told in this article, know that all of the BU40 attorneys represent the changing face of the legal profession. They are diverse in culture, discipline and excellence. Their repertoire goes beyond the traditional legal curriculum and includes tools and talents that will not only make them successful lawyers, but leaders in their fields and communities. They have already made an impact in the profession at relatively early stages of their careers. With their accomplishments thus far, it is inevitable that they will make further changes in the legal profession in years to come—how they will change it will be what to watch. D&B AZIZAH AHMAD (aahmad@napaba.org) is the communications manager for the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 31
NAPABA 2014 BEST LAWYERS UNDER 40
ANGELA F. CHAN Legal Director and Senior Staff Attorney Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus
Angela F. Chan, Asian Americans Advancing Justice— Asian Law Caucus
Angela F. Chan is a senior staff attorney managing the Criminal Justice Reform Program and the policy director at Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. Chan represents immigrant families who have youth caught in the juvenile justice system. She also advocates for policy reforms to disentangle local police from immigration enforcement. She co-led the campaign to pass the TRUST Act (AB 4), a state law enacted in 2014 to limit detentions of immigrants in local jails for immigration enforcement. Chan was a 2006 Soros Justice Fellow. She was named a Local Hero by the San Francisco Bay Guardian for her work assisting immigrant families. She earned a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA from Occidental College.
Samuel P. Go, Office of Immigration Litigation, U.S. Department of Justice Dawn Yamane Hewett, Arnold & Porter LLP Chris Hope, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP Teddy M. Kapur, Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones Miriam Kim, Munger Tolles & Olson Jannie K. Lau, InterDigital Inc. Rachel Lee, EMC Corporation Adeel Mangi, Patterson Belllnap Webb & Tyler LLP Vasu Muthyala, O’Melveny & Myers LLP
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Jennifer Chang Newell, American Civil Liberties Union
SAMUEL P. GO
Erica Smith-Klocek, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
U.S. Department of Justice
Kalpana Srinivasan, Susman Godfrey Ivy O. Suriyopas, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund Erica J. Suter, Law Offices of Erica J. Suter LLC Quyen Ta, Keker & Van Nest LLP Angelina Tsu, Zions Bancorporation Krishna Veeraraghavan, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP Bryan Wong, Hamre Schuman, Mueller & Larson PC Michele Wong, Microsoft Corporation Gregory Wu, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
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Senior Litigation Counsel Samuel P. Go serves as senior litigation counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Office of Immigration Litigation. He litigates immigration cases nationwide, representing the United States in the nation’s federal district and appellate courts. During his career at DOJ, Go has co-authored three prevailing briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court, favorably resolved two high-profile class actions as lead counsel and successfully argued numerous cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals. Go also served as chair of the DOJ Asian-Pacific American Employees Association in 2012 and 2013 and received the 2014 Federal Asian-Pacific American Council’s Civilian Award for Outstanding Leadership. He is a graduate of Brown University and Cornell Law School.
NAPABA 2014
BEST LAWYERS
DAWN YAMANE HEWETT
TEDDY M. KAPUR
Deputy General Counsel
Partner
U.S. Department of Commerce
Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones
Dawn Yamane Hewett is deputy general counsel for strategic initiatives at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Before that, she was a senior associate with Arnold & Porter LLP, where she represented foreign sovereigns, corporate clients and individuals in international arbitrations, U.S. litigation and U.S. criminal investigations. Hewett also maintained a corporate social responsibility practice and an active pro bono practice that included immigration, voting rights and public international law matters. She also served as a law clerk for Judge Margaret McKeown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Hewett obtained her JD from Yale Law School, MPA from Princeton University, MPhil from Trinity College Dublin and undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington, where she was the student body president.
CHRIS HOPE Chris Hope practices in Toronto, Canada, in the areas of business, entertainment and IP law. His expertise includes the brokering of financing, production and distribution deals and providing merchandising and licensing guidance. He is a frequent speaker at universities and law conferences, presenting on issues ranging from IP and alternative methods of financing to the contemporary significance of the World War II internment of Japanese North Americans. In 2012, Hope wrote and directed the critically acclaimed feature documentary “Hatsumi: One Grandmother’s Journey Through the Japanese Canadian Internment.” “Hatsumi” was widely released by one of Canada’s largest film distributors and was recently approved by major school boards for inclusion in school curricula. Actor and activist George Takei calls the film and the subsequent reaction to it a “monumental achievement.”
UNDER 40
Teddy M. Kapur is a partner at Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones in Los Angeles, where he specializes in all aspects of corporate bankruptcy and out-of-court restructurings. He has played an integral role in cases that have been awarded the “Mid-Size Company Turnaround of the Year” by the Turnaround Management Association and “Reorganization of the Year” by The M&A Advisor. He is an active member of the NAPABA Bankruptcy, Restructuring & Debtors’/ Creditors’ Rights Committee and the former president of the South Asian Bar Association of Southern California. In 2013, The Recorder named Kapur a “Lawyer on the Fast Track” and the The M&A Advisor selected him for its “40 Under 40 M&A Advisor Recognition Award.” Kapur is a magna cum laude graduate of Rice University. He earned his JD from New York University School of Law and his master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.
MIRIAM KIM Partner Munger Tolles & Olson
Miriam Kim is a partner at Munger Tolles & Olson. Her practice focuses on complex business litigation, intellectual property and internal investigations, with significant experience in trade secret and other disputes in the software and semiconductor industries. She has an active pro bono practice focused on the needs of survivors of sexual abuse. Kim serves as secretary of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area (AABA) and as president of the AABA Law Foundation. She chairs Munger Tolles’s development and retention committee and is a frequent speaker on diversity issues. After graduating from Harvard University in East Asian studies, Kim received her JD from U.C. Berkeley School of Law. She clerked for the Honorable Levin Campbell, U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit. MCCA.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 DIVERSITY & THE BAR 33
NAPABA 2014
BEST LAWYERS
UNDER 40
JANNIE K. LAU
ADEEL MANGI
Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
Partner Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP
InterDigital Inc.
Jannie K. Lau is executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of InterDigital Inc. Reporting to the chief executive officer, Lau manages the company’s legal and government affairs functions and advises the board of directors on legal, governance and compliance matters. She serves on the boards of directors of the American Cancer Society (Greater Philadelphia Area) and Jobs for Delaware Graduates. She is also a past member of the board of directors of DELVACCA, the Delaware Valley chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, and the executive committee of APABA-PA. Lau is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and earned a bachelor of arts in English literature from Columbia University.
RACHEL LEE Associate General Counsel EMC Corporation
Rachel Lee is associate general counsel at EMC Corporation. Lee’s practice focuses on corporate governance matters, including the review and implementation of governance best practices, communication with shareholders and other stakeholders, and sustainability. She provides legal support for key committees of the board of directors and advises on a wide range of securities law matters. Lee is president of the Eastern New England chapter of the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals and chair of the society’s corporate practices committee. She serves on the board of the Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts and is co-chair of the affinity bar relations committee of the Boston Bar Association. Rachel received a BA from Columbia College and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.
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Adeel Mangi is a litigation partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. He has expertise in false advertising, pharmaceutical pricing and complex commercial litigation. Mangi was named a 2014 Rising Star by both the New York Law Journal and Diversity & the Bar. He is also a 2013 graduate of the Microsoft Trial Advocacy Academy. He joined Patterson Belknap in 2000, upon his graduation from Harvard Law School with an LLM. Mangi is also a British barrister at law and holds a first-class degree in law from the University of Oxford (Pembroke College). He was raised and educated through high school in Karachi, Pakistan.
JENNIFER CHANG NEWELL Senior Staff Attorney ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project
Jennifer Chang Newell is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she first began as a Skadden Fellow in 2004. Her cases include M.S.P.C. v. Johnson, a lawsuit enforcing the due process rights of Central American mothers and children detained at the Artesia federal detention facility in New Mexico; Arizona DREAM Act Coalition v. Brewer, a challenge to Arizona’s denial of driver’s licenses to young immigrant “DREAMers” granted federal permission to live and work in the U.S.; and several preemption challenges to state and local antiimmigrant laws. Before joining the ACLU, Newell was a law clerk to Judge Marsha Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Newell is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Yale College.
NAPABA 2014
BEST LAWYERS
VASU MUTHYALA
KALPANA SRINIVASAN
Counsel
Partner
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
Susman Godfrey
Since 2011, Vasu Muthyala has worked at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, representing corporate and individual clients—from C-suite executives to highranking government officials to multinational companies—in criminal and securitiesrelated matters. Muthyala began his career in the U.S. Securitis and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement. For the next seven years, he served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, where he specialized in investigating and prosecuting corporate and securities fraud violations. Because of his global perspective and professional experience on both sides of the aisle, he is frequently asked to speak on securities litigation and enforcement trends. The Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s D.C. chapter recently recognized Muthyala’s leadership and commitment to the community by naming him a “Rising Star.” Global Investigations Review recently named him one of the top global investigators in the world under the age of 40.
ERICA SMITH-KLOCEK Partner Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP
Erica Smith-Klocek is a litigation partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. She represents pharmaceutical and life sciences clients in a variety of antitrust and commercial litigation matters, including class and other actions brought in state and federal courts by public and private payors alleging illegal pricing and marketing activities. Smith-Klocek also represents corporate clients in government investigations and civil actions brought by state and federal authorities. She is a past president of APABA-PA and serves on the boards of Community Legal Services and Philadelphia Legal Assistance. Previously, she clerked for Judge Thomas G. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and served as court counsel to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau.
UNDER 40
Kalpana Srinivasan tries highstakes cases for plaintiffs and defendants in courtrooms across the country. She has secured significant victories for her clients in patent, copyright, class action, contract and other disputes against major companies. Srinivasan recently was named one of California’s top 20 lawyers under 40 by the Los Angeles Daily Journal. She currently acts as the litigation chair of the South Asian Bar Association of North America, for which she previously sat on the executive committee. She also has served on the executive board of the South Asian Bar Association of Southern California. Srinivasan was the founding co-chair of the firm’s diversity committee. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Yale University.
IVY O. SURIYOPAS, ESQ. Director Anti-Trafficking Initiative, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Ivy O. Suriyopas is the director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Anti-Trafficking Initiative. She provides legal representation, conducts community education and engages in policy advocacy on human trafficking issues. Suriyopas serves as Freedom Network (USA) co-chair and a steering committee member of the N.Y. Anti-Trafficking Network. Publications include “Identification and Legal Advocacy for Trafficking Survivors (3rd ed.)” and “Immigration Relief for Crime Victims: the U Visa Manual.” She externed with the Honorable Martin J. Jenkins of the Northern District of California, served as co-editor-in-chief of the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and studied human rights law in South Africa. She received her JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and her BS from Cornell University.
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NAPABA 2014
BEST LAWYERS
UNDER 40
ERICA J. SUTER
ANGELINA TSU
Law Offices of Erica J. Suter LLC
Vice President, Legal Counsel
Since establishing her criminal defense practice in 2011, the life sentences of six of Erica J. Suter’s clients have been modified or vacated. Her practice involves appeals and collateral review in state and federal court. Suter is an active member of APABADC and has served on its nominations committee since 2009. She has been selected as a Super Lawyer Rising Star (Washington, D.C., and Maryland), for membership in the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Lawyers and as a Maryland Top 40 Under 40 Criminal Defense Lawyer. She earned her JD from Georgetown University, her MA from the University of Chicago and her BA from Bates College. Suter and her husband, Norman, are proud parents to two daughters, Nola, age 3, and Alaeric, 6 months.
QUYEN TA Partner
Zions Bancorporation
Angelina Tsu is vice president, legal counsel at Zions Bancorporation. Prior to joining Zions, she practiced at the law firm of Ray Quinney & Nebeker and served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Dee Benson (U.S. District Court, District of Utah). Tsu earned a JD from the S.J. Quinney College of Law, where she was a Leary Scholar and member of the Utah Law Review. Tsu serves as president-elect for the Utah State Bar. She is a member of the Federal Judicial Nominating Commission and serves on the boards of the Utah Minority Bar Foundation, Association of Corporate Counsel and Women Lawyers of Utah. Tsu has been recognized by the Utah State Bar (Young Lawyer of the Year), the Association of Corporate Counsel (Pro Bono Award), the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (Star of the Quarter) and the Utah Minority Bar Association (Distinguished Lawyer of the Year).
Keker & Van Nest LLP
Quyen Ta is a partner at Keker & Van Nest LLP. She litigates complex commercial matters and focuses her practice on intellectual property, securities and other complex business disputes. Ta has tried criminal and civil cases in state and federal courts. She has represented individual and institutional clients in the financial services, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, Internet and communications industries. Ta was a member of a team that secured a trial victory and settlement valued at more than $300 million for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. She was a member of a trial team that obtained a complete defense verdict on behalf of an Am Law 50 law firm and one of its former partners in a matter involving a $100 million legal malpractice claim. Ta serves in leadership positions in numerous organizations locally and nationally. She lives in Berkeley with her husband and twin sons.
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KRISHNA VEERARAGHAVAN Partner Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Krishna Veeraraghavan is a partner and co-head of his firm’s technology finance and mergers and acquisitions group, focusing his practice on M&A, corporate governance and private equity matters. He has represented U.S. and non-U.S. companies, special committees, boards of directors and financial advisers in public company transactions, leveraged buyouts and private company sales of subsidiaries and divisions. Veeraraghavan has advised clients on a number of deals that have shaped and defined industries such as energy, technology and health care and life sciences. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School.
NAPABA 2014
BRYAN WONG Partner Hamre Schumann Mueller & Larson PC
Bryan Wong, a hiring partner at HSML, practices intellectual property law. He focuses on domestic and international patent matters involving procurement, office appeals/oppositions, portfolio management, investigations and landscaping/due diligence. Wong is responsible for his firm’s largest client, which accounts for more than $3 million in billings and over 500 matters. He is responsible for the firm’s life sciences practice including work from China and assists in-house counsel in interviewing and selecting intellectual property counsel. Wong has served as of counsel for other law firms. Wong has attended multiple NAPABA national conferences and was an individual platinum member. He is a past MNAPABA president, served on its executive board for three years, and is on its advisory board. He has been a member of NAPABA and MNAPABA since 2003.
MICHELE WONG Senior Attorney Microsoft Corporation
Michele Wong is a senior Attorney for the Xbox Division of Microsoft Corporation. She provides product and technology development counseling and transactional support for the teams that design and build Microsoft-published Xbox video games and entertainment software. Wong also counsels the team building entertainment experiences for nextgeneration platforms. In her six years at Microsoft, Wong has also served as a product attorney for the Xbox Live online service and served on the client side as a director of business development in Microsoft’s Media and Entertainment Group, negotiating major entertainment and content deals with News Corporation, Comcast and Turner Networks. Wong is currently the treasurer for the board of directors for the Asian Bar Association of Washington (ABAW) Student
BEST LAWYERS
UNDER 40
Scholarship Foundation and has served on the board of governors for NAPABA and held office as president of ABAW. Prior to Microsoft, she was an attorney at the Seattle law firms of Cairncross & Hempelmann and Lane Powell LP. Wong holds a JD from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the University of California at Berkeley.
GREG WU Partner Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Greg Wu is a partner at Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP. As a member of the firm’s global product liability group, his practice focuses on tort and products liability defense, with an emphasis on class actions and complex personal injury litigation. His experience and involvement in the community have earned him honors such as being named “Best of the Bar” by the Kansas City Business Journal. He is a co-author of the Missouri & Kansas Class Action Law blog, which is dedicated to discussing developments in class actions and complex litigation in state and federal courts in Missouri and Kansas. Wu is dedicated to serving the local APA legal community, having previously served as president of the Asian American Bar Association of Kansas City. As chair of the marketing/social media committee for the 2013 Host Committee, he took a lead role in shaping the “Momentum” logo and theme. Wu also previously served as NAPABA’s liaison to the Leadership Council of the ABA’s Young Lawyer’s Division. He received his BA from the University of Michigan and his JD from the University of Illinois College of Law. D&B
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5
Indispensable: Ways to Be the GC Your CEO
Can’t Live Without By Jennifer J. Salopek THE ASSOCIATION OF CORPORATE COUNSEL’s
(ACC’s) Chief Legal Officer (CLO) 2014 Survey found that 85 percent of the 1,900 respondents are satisfied in their current jobs. That doesn’t mean that their bosses are satisfied with them. CLOs can extend their tenure by becoming indispensable to their companies’ chief executive officers (CEOs). Paul Williams, a Major Lindsey & Africa Global partner who has helped to place general counsel at companies worldwide for more than nine years, offers this advice:
1. Develop your business savvy.
The No. 1 thing chief legal officers can do is be effective, informed business partners. “Learn the business. Immerse yourself in the operations of the company. Understand how the company makes money,” Williams says. When he was general counsel at Cardinal Health, Williams prioritized visiting the company’s far-flung pharmaceutical distribution centers. “I always tell new general counsel to go out to locations, to talk with employees and managers,” he says. “Don’t stay in your office with your head down. Employees welcome these conversations and are often relieved to be asked about things.” ACC’s survey findings about the changing day-to-day responsibilities of general counsel bears this out. “Today, CLOs frequently serve as key members of senior management teams, sharing responsibility for the development of business strategies that support overall growth. It is not uncommon to find the CLO directly involved in decision-making regarding evaluating new business opportunities, budgeting, hiring practices, technology, process management and change management,” researchers write in the study’s executive summary. Sam Scott, former CEO of Corn Products International, recognized this business savvy in Mary Ann Hynes, whom he hired as general counsel in 2006 and worked with until he retired in 2009. “Corn Products is a global organization. We needed someone who understood the nuances of markets
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around the world,” he says. “I needed someone who understood the business thoroughly. Mary Ann’s experience showed.” General counsel at four other companies before joining Corn Products, Hynes also earned her MBA, something Williams says about one in five GCs do. Many get even more indepth experience; Williams says he is increasingly seeing GC candidates who have operational experience. “Responsibility for an operating unit, for example, gives the GC a pragmatic foundation, a grounding in parts of the business other than the legal side,” he says.
2. Cultivate your emotional intelligence. The CEO-GC relationship relies on trust and confidence. In many cases, it’s what you say and how you say it that matters when a CEO is counting on you. “A big part of being an effective general counsel is emotional intelligence. This goes beyond abstract legal concepts. In fact, analysis of legal issues can take a back seat to effective communication,” says Williams. “General counsel must couch the conversation in terms that the CEO respects, even if they disagree.” Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. The aforementioned business savvy will help you do this effectively. “The key is to look at things through a pragmatic business lens rather than just representing the legal perspective. This is a rare ability among lawyers, who are taught to recognize what could go wrong,” Williams says.
Paul Williams
Sam Scott
A relationship built on partnership and trust can make navigating choppy waters easier. Hynes relates the story of a disagreement with a CEO she worked with earlier in her career: “The situation involved money and the company’s reputation,” she says. “The conversation was getting very heated when I had this almost out-of-body experience. I thought, ‘This is really bad.’ I remembered that the disagreement wasn’t personal. So I assured the CEO that I had the company’s—and his—best interests at heart. I asked him to do things my way as a favor to me, and he agreed.”
3. Understand governance and board dynamics. This is a completely different skill set from business intelligence, according to Williams. “CEOs look for people who understand and can navigate complex board dynamics. Board members often have different agendas, issues, relationships and alliances. The CEO relies on the general counsel to help the board function effectively.” That role can manifest itself in wildly different ways, says Hynes. “My job was to keep the confidence of the board. How to do that might range from providing cookies to complex legal analysis.”
4. Be a problem solver. Scott says bluntly, “I wanted a general counsel who would tell me not how I can’t, but how I can.” ‘No’ is a very defining
Mary Ann Hynes
word. I would recommend that general counsel find other ways to go about saying ‘no’ and to only use the word when the situation is impossible.” The key, says Hynes, is to be a problem solver. “My job was to solve problems, not to bring them in. I tried to be very flexible. There are many different business solutions. Sometimes the general counsel can show a better way.”
5. Make ethical behavior non-negotiable. It’s important that general counsel recognize that their job is to represent the company that employs them, not other members of management. “Ultimately, your obligation is not to the CEO. You must make sure to exercise good judgment,” says Williams, who lived through an accounting investigation at Cardinal Health that implicated some senior people. “Many of us have been in situations where we have to make tough calls almost on a daily basis.” Hynes sees her job as helping executives arrive at the right decision. “In controversial situations, I advise as to the consequences of a certain action. If we continued down that path, I would say, ‘I don’t know how you would explain why you did that.’” “People should never expose themselves to the risk of not doing the right thing,” Williams says. D&B JENNIFER J. SALOPEK(jjsalopek@cox.net)is a freelance writer in
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MCCA Survey News www.mcca.com/research
You Can Use
Tech Matters to Gen Y Approximately 35% of all respondents felt that communication mechanisms used by leadership were not very effective. For these respondents, the key issues of ineffectiveness were: outdated technology, underutilized intranets, lack of transparency, outdated telephone systems, ineffective information technology support systems and other inefficiencies in technology infrastructures. Source: “Sustaining Pathways to Diversity—Workplace 2020: What Gen Y Attorneys Experience & Expect.”
Smaller In-house Departments May Not Have a D&I Program Out of the 765 in-house legal departments surveyed, only 30% of the responding legal departments reported having some type of a diversity and inclusion program. However, the larger the department, the more likely it was to have a program in place. For example, only 14% of the departments with two to five attorneys reported having a diversity program, while 87% of respondents with more than 75 attorneys responded to having a formal or information program. Source: “Sustaining Pathways to Diversity— A Comprehensive Examination of Diversity Demographics, Initiatives and Policies in Corporate Legal Departments,” available at www.mcca.com/ research
Inclusive Work Environments Matter to LGBT Associates When evaluating an offer of employment, almost all LGBT associates (98%) reported that the opportunity to work in a diverse and inclusive law firm was a significant consideration. LGBT associates also reported a higher likelihood of leaving if they perceived their work environments as not inclusive. Source: “Sustaining Pathways to Diversity—The New Paradigm of LGBT Inclusion: A Recommended Resource”
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Attorneys Receive Non-billable Credit for D iversityrelated Activities Nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents said attorneys receive nonbillable credit for all of their diversity-related activities, while another 16% said they receive some non-billable credit. Source: “2011 Law Firm Diversity Professional Survey,” available at www.mcca.com/research
DIVERSITY NEWS
Getting the Conversation Started One law firm’s quest to encourage both its male and female professionals to go ALL IN on leaning in
By Sue Stoffer and Melissa Foster Bird AS A LEAN IN PLATFORM PARTNER, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP and its diversity committee are taking steps to enhance the recruitment and retention of female attorneys and policy advisors to further their success, promote leadership and foster a better understanding of the unique issues facing women. Our strategic, structured focus on these issues will also allow the firm to enhance the diversity of perspectives we bring to clients and to advance a shared interest in improving diversity more broadly within the profession. Supporting the Nelson Mullins Women On the Go (WOGO) affinity groups helps us achieve these objectives. The WOGO groups host internal and external networking events and use Lean In materials and programs (available at www.leanin.org) to share ideas and experiences. Our bimonthly publication, WOGO News, highlights the leadership achievements of our female professionals and provides information about the group’s events to all firm employees and clients. Twitter users can follow WOGO @NMRSWomen. While these initiatives provide critical support to our female professionals, it is our new “ALLI (All Leaning In) Circles” that are pushing traditional boundaries.
What Are ALLI CIRCLES? ALLI Circles are small cross-office discussion groups (20-25 participants per group) that hold virtual monthly meetings to Lean In is a global community committed to offering women the encouragement and support to “lean in” to their ambitions. Founded in spring of 2013 by more than 150 organizations and thought leaders across pop culture, business, politics and education, Lean In principles are based on the book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” authored by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Lean In promoted partnerships to bring about organizational change in order to achieve greater diversity in leadership roles, according to the organization.
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DIVERSITY NEWS explore topics such as “Sitting at the Table,” “Leveling the Playing Field” and “Attributing Success and Vouching for Female and Minority Colleagues.” ALLI Circles also discuss the firm’s leave policies, targeted use of marketing dollars and evaluation bias. A cross-section of attorneys and policy advisors from our 14 offices make up the ALLI Circles and include professionals at every career level. Circle moderators select a topic for each call (and provide a short video or article for background). All moderators receive resources on topics such as developing leadership skills, family/career balance, gender bias, pitching business to female decision-makers, closing the confidence gap, fairly attributing success and being over-mentored and under-sponsored. The purpose of ALLI Circles is to encourage identification of, and honest conversation about, real and perceived obstacles and solutions with respect to hiring, retention, leadership development and promotion of female and minority professionals. ALLI Circles are designed to provide a safe environment for exploration of these issues with a goal of encouraging all to think and act inclusively. ■■The Rollout. We introduced ALLI Circles at a recent firm retreat, and several of our more visible male and female leaders took the stage to demonstrate how a circle works. We asked everyone to commit one year to participation in the ALLI Circles. Circle assignments were handled randomly, taking care to ensure that each circle represents multiple offices, and where possible, splitting up team members who work with each other on a day-to-day basis. Executive committee members shared their expectations that office managing partners and team and practice group leaders actively support and participate in the ALLI Circles. ■■The Circle Debrief Process. ALLI Circle moderators take part in regularly scheduled debriefing calls in which we share what is and isn’t working. For example, in several circles, moderators had difficulty getting participants to talk in the first meeting. In a large firm scattered over multiple offices, each ALLI Circle contained many participants who did not know each other or who had not worked together. Several of our moderators used ice-breaking techniques for their first meeting to get the group comfortable with each other. Some started a chain email in which each circle member introduced him or herself in a unique way. Each Circle has a female-male moderator team. To help them develop their facilitator skills, we share ideas and improvement tips during our regular debriefing telephone calls. While some moderators report finding circle conversations awkward at times, others say the conversations are spirited and engaging. Many of our junior female and minority associates
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are more hesitant to engage, but they will approach their moderators (or others) outside of their circle calls with thoughts and comments. We encourage these junior professionals to talk to their moderator (or one from another circle) to discuss how best to be engaged more fully in their circles. While some of the ALLI Circles started off slowly, once the circle members got more comfortable with each other (which can take two or three meetings), the conversations grew more robust. Differing points of view get expressed in the circle conversations, and, importantly, we find that the conversations carry over into the hallways outside of the circle calls. ■■How Will We Measure Success? In the short term, it will be observational. Are more female and minority professionals asking, or being asked, to step forward into leadership roles? Are real and perceived obstacles being identified and solutions proposed? Are firm professionals making an extra effort to be more inclusive when assigning projects, putting together client relationship teams and engaging clients and prospects socially? In the long term, success will be measured by increases in female and minority hiring, promotion and retention, along with an increase in business development and acceptance of leadership roles by our female and minority professionals. ■■Are We Seeing Some Success Now? You bet. Many of our female and other minority professionals report that simply by getting to know others in their circles, they are finding new business and networking opportunities. Developing these relationships enables them to team up with new people and collaborate to bring value to our clients. In addition, this program has led to a significant increase in general conversations throughout the firm about many of the important issues concerning female and minority professionals. These conversations help to increase awareness and prompt our professionals to act more thoughtfully and intentionally regarding these matters. We value our role as a Lean in Platform Partner and truly appreciate the dialogue it has created in the firm. We hope and expect that this dialogue will further our efforts to enable the women and minority professionals in the firm to have rewarding and successful careers. SUE STOFFER (sue.stoffer@nelsonmullins.com), a partner in the firm’s Atlanta office, practices in executive compensation and employee benefits. She is vice-chair of the firm’s diversity committee and leads the firm’s affinity group, LeanIn and ALLI Circle efforts. MELISSA FOSTER BIRD (melissa.fosterbird@nelsonmullins.com) is a partner in the firm’s Huntington, W.Va., office, practicing in litigation, and is a member of the diversity steering committee and a circle moderator.
MOVERS & SHAKERS
MATT FERGUSON
KANISHKA AGARWALA
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has added MATT FERGUSON as counsel in the firm’s Washington, D.C., and New York City offices. He will be joining Kilpatrick Townsend’s energy, project finance and technology team and will be a member of the corporate tax practice group. Ferguson is a seasoned business structure and transactions attorney who has advised on matters within a Fortune 50 Company and has been an advisor to many of today’s leading clean technology companies. Prior to joining Kilpatrick Townsend, he was the founding principal and national practice leader of the renewable energy practice at CohnReznick. Earlier in his career, Ferguson served as director and general tax counsel for United Parcel Service (UPS) and was responsible for initiating UPS’s energy strategy, including executing investment transactions in renewable energy, coordinating energy efficiency facility upgrades and green building development, creating energy-related products and mitigating business-related risk. Ferguson is a leader in the renewable energy industry, serving as secretary and member of the board of directors for the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and co-chair of ACORE’s renewable energy finance and investment committee. He is also director of the Solar Electric Power Association. He earned his JD from Georgia State University and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Franklin Pierce College.
Anderson Kill has named KANISHKA AGARWALA, an attorney in the firm’s New York office, shareholder. Agarwala originally joined Anderson Kill in October of 2000 and is chair of the firm’s intellectual property group. His practice focuses on intellectual property, commercial and unfair competition litigation, and insurance recovery. Agarwala has rendered advice on, strategized, litigated and licensed patents, trademarks, trade dress, know how and copyrights, including matters relating to cyber law, domain names and trade secrets. His practice includes proceedings before federal and state courts and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. He also has extensive experience in the transactional aspects of intellectual property, having negotiated and drafted several agreements pertaining to myriad facets of intellectual property. Agarwala is admitted to practice in New York; the U.S. District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York; the Bar Council of Delhi, India; the Patent Office of India; and as a solicitor in the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He holds an LLM in intellectual property from Franklin Pierce Law Center (now, University of New Hampshire), an LLB from University of Delhi and a BSc from Bangalore University, St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, India.
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MOVERS & SHAKERS
ARIANA SARABIA
LAURA SAKLAD
McKenna Long & Aldridge has added ARIANA SARABIA to its Los Angeles office. Sarabia, who is a partner, joins McKenna from global construction firm Gilbane Federal (formerly ITSI), where she served as chief counsel, corporate ethics and compliance officer, and corporate secretary. Her work largely focused on counseling Gilbane’s leadership and board on compliance and ethics matters across business units. Gilbane’s worldwide construction projects span both private and public sector work, including U.S. military bases and sensitive installations in remote locations, and large energy projects. Sarabia was Western regional counsel for another major construction contractor, MACTEC, and environmental counsel for a pulp and paper company, Potlatch Corporation. Prior to practicing law, Sarabia was an engineer in the aerospace industry. She earned her JD at Harvard Law School and her MS and BS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP has appointed LAURA SAKLAD chief administrative officer. A 10-year Orrick veteran, with 20 years of experience in the legal industry, Saklad served most recently as Orrick’s chief talent officer and executive director-US. Saklad has played an instrumental role in the firm’s strategies to deliver distinctive services to the tech, financing and energy and infrastructure sectors, be a leading law firm employer, and meet client demand for quality and value. A widely recognized authority on law firm talent strategies, she has led the development of the firm’s unique merit-based lawyer talent model and the introduction of its career associate model in Wheeling, W.Va. Both programs were the firsts of their kind in a major law firm and continue to be widely viewed as exemplars. Her contributions have also included helping to lead the transformation of the firm’s technology and research and information functions, overseeing the firm’s HR function and the operations of its 10 U.S. offices, and leading several initiatives to improve cost efficiency. Before joining Orrick, Saklad served in senior roles in lawyer professional development and human resources at Clifford Chance. Prior to that, she served for 10 years in management roles at a Fortune 500 corporation. She has published extensively on law firm talent models and speaks regularly for the National Association for Law Placement and other industry programs. Saklad will lead all of the firm’s administrative functions with the exception of finance and the general counsel’s office, which will continue to report directly to the chairman.
Get involved. Stay fluent in industry trends. Join MCCA Today. The Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) is the premier source of learning, knowledge and future-oriented research on diversity and inclusion for the in-house legal profession. We provide resources, education, ideas and networking to enhance the power and performance of this community. Since 1997, MCCA in-house legal department members have been committed to diversity and inclusion. Not in-house counsel? MCCA has the Law Firm Affiliate Network (FAN) to support and acknowledge law firms that are committed to advancing diversity and inclusion in the legal profession. If you are interested in joining a dynamic group of legal professionals committed to diversity and inclusion, visit www.mcca.com/membership for details or call 202.739.5901.
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