The Legal Intelligencer Blog

Where Are All the Women- and Minority-Owned Firms??

By Jaime Bochet

Of the Legal Staff

Every year, The Legal Intelligencer publishes a magazine called "PALaw: Annual Report on the Legal Profession," which provides hard data and analysis on PA's legal landscape, including our Managing Partners Survey (an anonymous survey currently accessible online at www.tlisurvey.com, password palaw),  and the 100 Largest Law Firms in PA.

One of the key sections we're looking to improve is the "Women- and Minority-Owned Firms." We believe there are a number of such firms that go unreported, and we want to collect more data and list more firms.

Maybe you're a woman who started her own solo or small firm, or you know someone who did. Maybe you work for a minority attorney who runs his or her own firm. Maybe you have a friend who knows someone ... see where I'm going with this? We want to include those firms, and it will help them to get their names out there and in front of the thousands of lawyers who use the PaLAW all year. 

And being included couldn't be easier. All you have to do is get in touch with me by e-mail or phone, and fill out a simple, one-page survey. That's it. And no, we don't charge anyone to be included in the magazine. 

In addition to giving greater exposure to the firms in the magazine, we'll get to know these firms better. This creates opportunities for them to be called for comment on stories we're working on, and to pitch articles for the paper and our special supplements.

I hope that you'll take a moment to get in touch with me, or tell someone else to give me a call. We want to know you're out there, and we want to make sure you're getting the recognition you deserve. Call me at 215-557-2368, or e-mail me now!

Prop 8 Work Brings Olson, Boies to Philadelphia

By Gina Passarella
Of the Legal Staff

The Equality Forums Global GLBT Summit is being held in Philadelphia this week and will near its culmination Saturday night with a dinner honoring two noted lawyers who surprised some by coming down on the same side of the gay marriage issue.

Now, famed litigators David Boies and Ted Olson will come together Saturday to be honored by the Equality Forum with its International Role Model Award for their representation of two plaintiffs challenging Californias Proposition 8 a ban on gay marriage.

David Boies, managing partner with Boies Schiller & Flexner, and Ted Olson, a current Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner and former U.S. Solicitor General under George W. Bush, had been adversaries in 2000 when Olson represented Bush and Boies represented former Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore.

Neither is a stranger to big-impact, high-profile cases. And perhaps no case was more closely watched this year, and a decision still so eagerly awaited in, than Perry v. Schwarzenneger.

Abbe Fletman, a shareholder with Flaster Greenberg, has long been on the national board of governors of the Equality Forum and will be introducing Olson and Boies Saturday night.

As a trial lawyer, Im deeply honored to be introducing David Boies and Ted Olson, Fletman said Thursday. As I will say on Saturday, to me they are rock stars.

Fletman said if someone were to have called her a year before the Prop 8 cases began and said Ted Olson would be representing a plaintiff, she wouldnt have believed them.

I think it says something very positive for civility in the profession that two people who are often professional antagonists could come together and work as co-counsel in a single case, Fletman said. I think thats how the profession should work.

The Equality Forums week-long summit concludes Sunday with a National Same-Sex Commitment Ceremony followed by parties and a mass.

Wanted for Next Diversity Summit: More White Guys

I had the good fortune to attend a portion of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s 2nd Annual Diversity Summit last week. It looked as if it was a big success. There were about 300 attendees or so, which outside a bench bar is the biggest turnout I’ve ever seen for an event like that. I was only able to stay for about 3 hours, but between that and what my reporters relayed to me, I heard some interesting things.

First, it was stunning to see statistics showing that while the percentage of law students who are women or minorities has grown dramatically in the past 30 years or so – growing in leaps and bounds if you will – the percentage of women and minorities who are partners at large law firms has barely increased at all.

That may be apparent to a lot of people in the legal community, but seeing such growth and progress on one end, and hardly any on the other, presented so plainly, shocked me. I would think it would shock some others too.

Which is probably why there was an undercurrent of frustration from some of the people I heard speak. Frustration at the lack of progress, and frustration in the minds of some that issues aren’t being addressed to fix that.

Memo to law firm leadership: if you don’t think diversity is a problem, you’re kidding yourselves. And unless you start addressing the issue, you’re going to lose clients and talent at some point.

Which brings me to my one critique of the summit: it needed more white guys.

I’m not trying to be wise guy either. The vast majority of those in attendance were minorities and women. And that’s great. But if the majority of partners, particularly at the large firms, are white men, then they are the ones who probably needed to hear what was being said more than a lot of the attendees.

If things are going to change, isn’t it going to have to start with a lot of those white men in management?

I know the organizers were aiming to have managing partners and those in firm management in attendance, so I doubt it was a lack of effort on their part.

You would think that if a law firm was concerned about the issue and wanted to improve the diversity at the firm, it would send upper management to an event like the summit. Hmm.

I wasn’t the only person who commented on that. One woman, who identified herself as a government lawyer, expressed some frustration that her bosses weren’t at the summit and didn’t get to hear some of the issues and comments that were coming up.

This isn’t to suggest that the summit wasn’t a success or helpful. It sure seemed to be on both counts, and the organizers should be proud. I just think there would be greater potential for change if more of the white men in upper management attended.

Again, I wasn’t there the whole day. But I didn’t see a whole lot of managing partners. I was hoping I would. I guess there’s always next year.

--Hank Grezlak, Editor-in-Chief