Diversity. Diversity. Diversity. When is the legal profession going to get the message?

Illustration by Hanna Barczyk

If a real focus on diversity is ever going to succeed it is going to be client driven. In that spirit, General Counsel from twelve global financial institutions published an open letter on September 30, 2020  calling for more diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, and providing specific areas of focus to help drive change. This letter was published on the heels of continued recent violence and injustice against Black people and news coverage of Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf’s comments, including that there is a “limited pool” of qualified candidates among minority groups. It also comes almost two years after a January 2019 letter signed by 170 General Counsel urging law firms to “consciously and personally invest in diversity and inclusion and interview, hire, mentor, support, sponsor, and promote talented attorneys….”

The September 2020 letter is signed by General Counsel at the following institutions: Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank, and UBS Group AG and USB AG.

The letter begins by explaining that while each signatory’s institution has its own diversity and inclusion initiatives, there is enormous power and impact in utilizing collective action to drive change. They state: “We choose to come together in this moment in the hope we can drive more substantial impact for our industry together than we might achieve individually.” The letter continues by laying out the three “pillars” of their commitment: Internal Action, External Supplier Engagements and Social Action Efforts. 

The specific areas of focus for Internal Action include increased opportunities for leadership roles for diverse employees, broadened involvement of diverse employees in groups that identify talent and decide promotions, and ensuring diverse panels of interviewers and candidates. 

The letter also identifies specific commitments to further diversity and inclusion on their External Supplier Engagements—as did the closing commitment of the January 2019 open letter signed by General Counsel—such as: including law firm diversity data among the factors considered in choosing external counsel, increased opportunities for diverse attorneys to lead matters and identifying law firms with diverse ownership.

Finally, General Counsel address their commitment to Social Action Efforts “to address issues faced by under-represented communities;” specifically, ensuring availability of a breadth of pro bono opportunities addressing matters that result from social and racial injustice and establishing or expanding programming to support lawyers from underrepresented backgrounds. 

The importance of leaders stepping forward in this time and the example set by these 12 General Counsel cannot be overstated. With that said, the leaders of our profession and the powerful institutions within our society can always do more to promote diversity and inclusion. We look forward to seeing the actions that follow the letter. 

As we know, companies must invest their outside counsel budgets in diverse legal teams to truly fulfill their verbal commitments. The General Counsel who signed the January 2019 open letter also made this point and commitment: “We, as a group, will direct our substantial outside counsel spend to those law firms that manifest results with respect to diversity and inclusion, in addition to providing the highest degree of quality representation.” 

While it is disheartening that a second letter would be needed, especially after the strong expectations set by the 2019 letter, it is encouraging that powerful clients in corporate America continue to push the legal profession to meet this ongoing expectation.