Trial Magazine

Studies show that gender-diverse workplaces lead to better decision-making. Here are some ways to increase firm diversity and get more women to join your firm’s leadership ranks.

Gender-diverse teams in the office deliver stronger financial returns and make better decisions.¹ Despite this fact, the legal industry is still playing catch-up: Although women have made up at least half of all law school students for the past 25 years² and currently make up 45 percent of firm associates,³ only about 18 percent of law firm equity partners are women.⁴ The statistics are even starker for minority women, who make up about 12 percent of law firm associates and only 2.5 percent of law firm partners.⁵ To attract, retain, and motivate the most qualified individuals, firms must ensure women have an equal opportunity to attain leadership positions.⁶

Studies have found a significant relationship between a company’s financial performance and the number of women it employs in leadership positions.⁷ In its 2016 diversity report, Acritas Research released one of the few studies focused solely on law. It found that diverse teams perform better and receive 25 percent more of their clients’ legal spending, adding to the mounting evidence that a law firm’s lack of diversity is detrimental to its long-term financial success.⁸

Although diversity results in higher performance levels, an increased share of spending, and a greater likelihood of being recommended to clients’ peers, Acritas found that only one-quarter of survey respondents rated their legal teams as diverse in terms of gender, nationality, socioeconomic status, age, sexual orientation, and years of experience.⁹

Researchers have also found that the collective intelligence of a group is not determined by the intelligence of its individual members but is instead correlated to the style and type of interaction between the group members.¹⁰ Essentially, the smartest teams have three characteristics: members contribute equally, members are socially sensitive and are able to read fellow members’ complex emotions, and the majority of team members are women.¹¹ Because women generally score higher on social sensitivity tests—an individual’s ability to gauge others’ moods—more women generally result in increased social sensitivity.¹²

Decades of research has also found that diversity creates additional benefits:

• Social groups that are diverse—whether by race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation—are more innovative than homogeneous groups.¹³
• When stressed or under pressure, women make more advantageous decisions, are more empathetic, and take other people’s perspectives into account.¹⁴
• Diverse groups process information more carefully than homogeneous groups.

So what can be done to increase gender diversity in law firms? First, firms must recognize the benefits of increasing diversity. Second, they must focus on hiring, retaining, and supporting women’s and minorities’ ability to access leadership positions.

Adopt a “Rooney Rule.” Established in 2003, the National Football League’s Rooney Rule requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and other senior management positions, ensuring that minorities are considered for those jobs.¹⁵ Your firm should adopt this policy for prospective attorneys as part of its general hiring and leadership interview process.

Focus on retention. Although many firms already have some type of diversity and inclusion plan or department, women still leave firms at a higher rate than men, often because they feel the opportunity to be promoted to more senior positions is lacking.¹⁶ In fact, up to 85 percent of women of color quit firm jobs within their first seven years of practice due to the lack of upward mobility.¹⁷

Conduct exit interviews with female and minority attorneys to understand why they are moving to new opportunities. Consider hiring a diversity and inclusion consultant to assess firm culture, ensuring that work is distributed in a fair and active way and that diverse attorneys are engaged in leadership roles.¹⁸

Make diversity-related activities expected and billable. Count hours spent on these efforts—such as membership on the firm’s diversity committee or diversity training—toward “firm commitment” or other qualified billable hours.¹⁹

Conduct mandatory implicit bias training. (See p. 28 of this issue, Looking Within for Implicit Bias).

Engage firm leadership. For diversity to take hold in a firm, senior partners and leadership must be actively committed and engaged. Diversity is everyone’s responsibility. The majority of equity partners are men, so they especially need to be involved.²⁰ Have senior partners lead the diversity and inclusion effort, and hold them accountable for the professional development of the female and minority attorneys under their supervision.²¹

Implement leadership training programs. A lack of women in senior positions or who make partner can harm recruiting efforts—and even result in loss of prospective and existing clients.²² But you need to prepare your female attorneys, including new associates and lateral hires, for these leadership positions. These programs should last between six months and one year and should include personal coaching, mentoring, reading assignments, and marketing skills development to complement ongoing firm programs.²³

Law firms need to manage their talent pool with a critical eye toward diversity—or they put their futures at risk.24 Your clients and your practice benefit from a diverse group of decision-makers, so make it a priority.

---

Elizabeth M. Fors is an associate at Robins Kaplan in Minneapolis. She can be reached at fors@robinskaplan.com.

---

Notes

1. Jacqueline Bell, What Happens at Law Firms When Women Take Charge, Law360 (Apr. 20, 2016), www.law360.com/articles/786736/what-happens-at-law-firms-when-women-take-charge. 
2. Elizabeth Olson, Women Make Up Majority of U.S. Law Students for First Time, N.Y. Times (Dec. 16, 2016), www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/business/dealbook/women-majority-of-us-law-students-first-time.html.
3. NALP, 2016 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms, (Jan. 2017), www.nalp.org/uploads/Membership/2016NALPReportonDiversityinUSLawFirms.pdf. 
4. See Nat’l Ass’n of Women Lawyers (NAWL), Report of the Ninth Annual NAWL National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms, at 2, (Oct. 2015), www.nawl.org/d/do/343.
5. Id. at 4; see also NALP Bulletin, Women and Minorities at Law Firms by Race and Ethnicity—New Findings for 2015, (Jan. 2016), www.nalp.org/0116research. 
6. DRI, A Career in the Courtroom: A Different Model for the Success of Women Who Try Cases, at 25, (2004), www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/marketresearch/PublicDocuments/Women_in_the_Courtroom.authcheckdam.pdf. 
7. Solange Charas, A Mathematical Argument for More Women in Leadership, Fast Company (Sept. 30, 2014), www.fastcompany.com/3036365/a-mathematical-approach-to-appointing-more-women-to-your-board.
8. Acritas, Diversity Report, at 9, (2016), cloc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Acritas-Diversity-Report-2016.pdf. 
9. Id.
10. Anita Woolley et al., Why Some Teams are Smarter Than Others, N.Y. Times (Jan. 16, 2015), www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/why-some-teams-are-smarter-than-others.html.
11. Anita Williams Woolley et al., Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups, 330 Sci. 686 (2010), science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6004/686; Woolley et al., N.Y. Times, supra note 10. 
12. Credit Suisse, Gender Diversity and Corporate Performance, at 17, (Aug. 2012) www.calstrs.com/sites/main/files/file-attachments/csri_gender_diversity_and_corporate_performance.pdf.
13. Katherine W. Phillips, How Diversity Makes Us Smarter, Sci. Am. (Oct. 1, 2014), www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter. 
14. Therese Huston, Are Women Better Decision Makers?, N.Y. Times (Oct. 17, 2014), www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/opinion/sunday/are-women-better-decision-makers.html. 
15. Casey Sullivan, 4 Ways to Reduce the Legal Industry’s Gender Divide, Bloomberg L., (Oct. 20, 2016), bol.bna.com/4-ways-to-reduce-the-legal-industrys-gender-divide/.
16. Id.
17. Liane Jackson, Minority Women are Disappearing from BigLaw—and Here’s Why, A.B.A. J. (Mar. 1, 2016), www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/minority_women_are_disappearing_from_biglaw_and_heres_why/. 
18. Id. See also NALP, Diversity Best Practices Guide, at 8, (2016), www.nalp.org/diversitybestpracticesguides. 
19. NALP, Best Practices Guide, supra note 18, at 6. 
20. Caren Ulrich Stacy, Trends and Innovations Boosting Diversity in the Law and Beyond, ABA Law Practice Today (Mar. 14, 2016), www.lawpracticetoday.org/article/trends-and-innovations-boosting-diversity-in-the-law-and-beyond/. 
21. See Jackson, supra note 17; see also NALP, supra note 18. 
22. Stacy, supra note 20. 
23. Id.
24. NAWL, supra note 4, at 14.