Legal Forges Ahead With DE&I Efforts, Despite Backlash

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The Shift: Legal Forges Ahead With DE&I Efforts, Despite Backlash

Almost four years ago, the murder of George Floyd sparked a renewed focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) across the U.S. Yet over the past few years, such DE&I efforts have faced sustained attacks, recently bolstered in part by the June 2023 SCOTUS ruling against affirmative action in higher education. This contentious environment has led some industries to pause or even roll back their DE&I campaigns altogether.

The legal industry, however, is standing firm. While DE&I rhetoric may not be as prominent as it was in 2020, efforts to address gender and racial disparities in the legal industry are not only ongoing, but also expanding and maturing.

For some, the backlash against DE&I is motivation to push forward with even more vigor and determination. And these efforts are not in vain—though painfully slow, some are seeing meaningful progress.

Yet there is a tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done, especially when it comes to transparency into the legal industry’s demographics, tracking diversity efforts in organizations and making room for voices that have too often been left out.

The Conversation

The fact that the legal industry’s DE&I efforts are forging on, growing and maturing may not be evident at first. The reason? It’s likely that fewer people are talking about it.

“My sense is that a lot of clients are maybe toning down public messaging,” said Jennifer Martinez, partner and chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at the San Francisco, California-based law firm Hanson Bridgett. “In-house lawyers will say, ‘Can we avoid talking about this?’ My gut is that they are not necessarily backing off the actual actions, but they don’t want to be in the public media about what they are doing.”

Despite this silence, however, there’s evidence many are not backing off. A January 2024 report by labor and employment law firm Littler Mendelson that surveyed 320 senior executives found that over half of respondents expanded their DE&I efforts last year, even though almost 60% said DE&I backlash has grown since the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling.

“We’re seeing many employers maintain—or even double down on—their commitment to [DE&I], even as backlash spikes,” said Littler office managing shareholder Jeanine Conley Daves.

In fact, the backlash is even motivating some firms to commit further to their DEI focus . “In every movement, there has been two steps forward and one step back, but that’s a net gain,” said Davis Wright Tremaine’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer Yusuf Zakir. “… I remember when this work was ignored. We’re past that now. We’re at a critical point, the point of having this work directly fought against, attempts to kind of burn it down. I’m confident we will make it through this.”

Outside of legal departments and law firms, the legal technology space is also seeing growing efforts to address diversity gaps. At their second annual meeting , held at Legalweek 2024 in New York, Blacks United in Legal Technology (BUiLT), an organization founded by Black legal tech professionals that looks to promote DE&I in their market, discussed how it aims to grow its community and efforts in the years ahead.

Before their annual event, BUiLT co-founder Dawson Horn, who is the associate general counsel to the litigation department at AIG, said the organization had ideas on how to “facilitate diversity within the community … things like greater networking and things like mentorship, things like understanding the industry and getting its metrics … [and] facilitating jobs or facilitating a pipeline for diverse candidates to get into the industry.”

If there seems to be momentum behind the legal industry’s DE&I efforts, it can be attributed in part to women and people of color getting into more leadership positions.

In what are just a couple examples of many, since the start of the year, former Ogletree Deakins chief operating officer Lisa Ellis-James took the reins at legal services firm Harbor Global, while e-discovery counsel Ashley Picker Dubin became the first woman to ever lead the discovery practice at Day Pitney.

Meanwhile, in the legal tech market, a growing number of women are becoming legal tech founders, making an indelible, and much needed, mark on an industry that too often ignores the contributions of female legal technologists.

For Dubin, such progress is just the tip of the iceberg. “Women so frequently take a backseat,” she said. “They don’t raise their hands, they are more hesitant in general—we are more hesitant in general. And I think that we are finding our voice in a way that we haven’t before. I think 2024 is the ‘Year of the Woman’ in legal tech.’”

The Significance

DE&I progress has not come easy—and is far from enough.

While more women are founding legal tech companies, for instance, the vast majority of legal tech investment still goes to male-founded startups.

What’s more, while women are increasingly finding themselves in leadership roles, there still exists a pervasive “Boy’s Club ” in the legal tech industry that manifests in various ways, from more men self-identifying or being picked as experts in emerging technologies, such as generative AI, to the “manels”—all male panels—at industry conferences.

“I think there are a lot of voices out there. Really interesting, curious voices that have perspectives that have been formed by their unique experience in this very unique ecosystem. I think those voices are often put aside in celebration of new, fresh, white male voices and that’s a bummer, “ said Sang Lee, the CEO and co-founder of technology-enabled assessment company Thine.

When it comes to making sure people of color have a seat at the table in the industry, the problems are just as pervasive, if not more so. Similar to the experience many women face, legal tech founders of color are also more likely to be passed over by investors, even amidst a larger effort to expand mentorships and make the legal tech industry more inclusive.

And while many clients are pushing their firms to become more diverse and inclusive organizations, such progress seems to be stalling, in part because legal departments aren’t enforcing these mandates. But it’s hard to enforce such policies when there has been little progress in tracking diversity in the legal market.

“Most firms feel they are still early in collecting complete, quality data for diversity,” said David Cunningham, Chief Innovation Officer at Reed Smith.

The legal tech market faces the same shortcomings. “I believe the industry does have work to do with diversity metrics. I do not believe there has been a study … aside from something we did about a year ago, that has been focused on diverse talents within the legal tech industry,” Horn said.

It's hard to understate just how fundamental such data and metrics are to DE&I efforts across the legal industry, from law firms and courts to the legal tech and e-discovery markets. “To truly diversify and to unlock innovation in the e-discovery arena, you have to know who exists in this landscape,” said Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court Tanya R. Kennedy. “The problem is there is no data about the number of underrepresented groups in the e-discovery community.”

The Information

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The Forecast

Legal professionals know where the gaps are in their DE&I efforts. Many, including those at BUiLT and elsewhere, are focused on putting in the hard work to create and publish diversity metrics, make funding more equitable and ensure the voices of women and people of color are heard not just in their own organizations, but across the industry.

These efforts are focused on building and reinforcing a foundation on which the legal industry can foster a more diverse and inclusive future. And when they succeed, they create more momentum and lay the groundwork for more lasting change.

Having more women and people of color in law firms, legal departments and legal tech companies, especially in leadership roles, can help those who are all too often unrepresented in these offices know that they belong.

“Sometimes there can be impostor syndrome , definitely as a woman and as a Black woman. I know that I’ve experienced it where sometimes you can be unsure about movement within the firm. But being able to reach out to Tiffani, being able to reach out to Kelly-Ann and say, ‘This is what I’m thinking’ or ‘This is what I’m experiencing’—the gut checks are invaluable,” said co-chair of Holland & Knight’s consumer protection defense and compliance team Kwamina Williford, speaking of the firm’s incoming deputy managing partner Tiffani Lee and its executive partner Kelly-Ann Cartwright.

Rhys Dipshan is the senior editor on the legal technology news desk. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter: @R_Dipshan