Goodwin - The Role of Equity in Law Firm Diversity Efforts.

Chambers Associate: When did the concept of equity begin to feature more prominently in law firms’ diversity efforts and what prompted this shift?

Rob Insolia, chair: I graduated from law school in 1984 and approximately half of my graduating class were women, and now you look nearly 40 years later and you don’t see women making up half of the equity partners at the Am Law 100. It’s equity. It’s how you can ensure that everybody has the same nourishment and encouragement and opportunities for success, and that to me is what equity is about.

Calvin Wingfield, partner: While equity has been a core value at Goodwin since I joined the firm nearly 16 years ago, the racial unrest and waves of protests in 2020 following the tragic murders of Ahmaud Arbrey, Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Hakim Littleton, and Breonna Taylor was a watershed moment for Goodwin and its journey to fashion itself into a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive law firm. Those events sparked the firm to look inward and to assess the impact of the firm’s policies and systems on its attorney population and global operations team.  

"We started looking at what we can do to ensure that everyone has equal access to opportunities as opposed to equal treatment."

Yakiry Adal, director, DEI: What organizations have done is move from a concept of equality towards a concept of equity. By recognizing the ways in which each of us has a unique experience in an organization because of our background and societal forces, we began shifting away from this concept of treating people the same towards this concept of acknowledging that not everyone is starting from the same place. We started looking at what we can do to ensure that everyone has equal access to opportunities as opposed to equal treatment.

We’re particularly focused on racial equity, and the ways in which we have historically left out and marginalized individuals who are members of the BIPOC community. More recently, there’s been a shift in the conversation, and it has allowed organizations to talk more openly about inequity.

Theresa DeLoach, managing director, strategic alumni engagement & client relations: : It’s gone from a numeric value to really a deeper dive into the roles that people play. A quote I like to use to describe it is ‘the difference between being asked to the party versus being asked to dance at the party.’ And it felt like the in-house counsel who drive a lot of these efforts were no longer comfortable with just seeing a diverse slate of people on the pitch team, but they really wanted to know who would be doing the work. It was becoming more and more apparent that the next generation of lawyers were living through the experiences that many in-house counsel had already lived through and they wanted to change that. They wanted to make sure that the diverse faces were actually empowered to do the work and lead the efforts.

Chambers Associate: Did viewing diversity efforts through this concept of equity highlight any areas, approaches or systems that were in need of a revamp?

Calvin Wingfield: Focusing on equity has led Goodwin to reevaluate nearly every facet of the firm.  We examined how junior associates get placed into a business unit or practice area, how work is allocated to associates, and how information and client development opportunities are shared with senior associates and more junior partners. We also have examined the various pipelines to leadership roles at the firm and evaluated how selections are made there. In some of these areas, Goodwin already had policies and procedures in place that were designed to be equitable, but we learned that the results did not always demonstrate that. So we have made tweaks and continue to assess our progress as we strive to become a more equitable firm tomorrow than we are today.     

Yakiry Adal: Several years ago, organizations started focusing on unconscious bias, and how we can change our systems and processes to disrupt that bias. The equity conversation perhaps gives us a better lens through which to explain to people that it’s not just systemic biases, it’s that individuals are subject to those biases and have not been on a level playing field. Focusing on people’s lived experience in addition to examining the data is critical.

Equity in an organization starts with our talent, which is an area where we need to create significant change. But there’s also so much we can do as an organization in terms of having an impact on equity in the world. It’s about examining our vendors, thinking about the people we’re giving opportunities to through our client networks and connections, and exploring how we’re showing up in our unique ecosystem in support of equity.

"Focusing on people’s lived experience in addition to examining the data is critical." 

Tevia Pollard, partner: I think it’s a difference in terms of approach when we start thinking about what DEI efforts actually mean, and people beginning to realize there is a difference in the types and amounts of opportunities. We can’t wait until a lawyer is in their 7th year to then examine how they fell short. We have been looking at it holistically from the time a lawyer from a diverse background joins the firm as a summer associate and then throughout their career. We need to make sure that everyone in that same class is getting the same chances for deals, to meet key clients, and to work with influential partners. It’s about everyone getting equal access to opportunities.

Chambers Associate: In which ways has the concept of equity entered the equation with regards to formal diversity initiatives?

Rob Insolia: Success at a law firm is often determined by matters you’re staffed on and who takes you under their wing, and people tend to identify with and gravitate toward those who are like them or have similar backgrounds. We want to ensure that everyone in the Goodwin community is connected to  meaningful, career-enhancing work, and supportive professional relationships through every step of their career. We’ve implemented several initiatives designed to make this happen. The first is ensuring equitable work allocation. We have attorney development managers in each of our BUs working with DEI team leads to monitor staffing and client development opportunities. We also have an advisory program focused on first and second year associates. Relationship building continues via our mentorship program for mid to senior associates. As associates advance in their career, we offer a sponsorship program for non-equity partners. These programs are not to the exclusion of the natural connections that might be fostered in the workplace, but help ensure that if these opportunities don’t materialize organically we are still able to connect with our diverse lawyers.

Theresa DeLoach: I’m also proud that we’ve added culture and innovation time, where lawyers can receive billable hour credit for activities that enhance firm culture, such as DEI. We thought the addition of culture and innovation time would help so many of our diverse lawyers not have to pay the tax that minority groups often face in terms of having to do meaningful work for which they’re not compensated.

"It’s not enough to have a nebulous idea in terms of achieving equity." 

Tevia Pollard: We’re making a concerted effort to get more stakeholders involved. One thing we are doing is making sure that each business unit has a plan in place to ensure that lawyers from diverse backgrounds succeed. It’s not enough to have a nebulous idea in terms of achieving equity. We understand that something happens to diverse associates as they move throughout their career, so we have them meet with business unit leaders to get buy in early on and put a specific plan in place for each associate that we think can succeed if given the right opportunities. That plan covers what they want to work on, who they’d like to meet and how they’re going to get there, and then we check in regularly to make sure there’s continual growth towards achieving those goals.

Chambers Associate: In what ways has the concept of equity filtered through into other areas of law firm life, beyond diversity initiatives?

Yakiry Adal: We’ve taken a holistic approach to infuse equity into all areas of firm life. This starts with looking at how we bring somebody into the organization and what early opportunities they have within the firm. We also consistently review our staffing, mentorship, promotion, and feedback systems to ensure equity when it comes to assessment, advancement and access to leadership roles. These are the places where I think organizations have said there is inequity within our own house, and we need to fix it.

Calvin Wingfield: The firm also is focused much more on DEI, and equity in particular, when we consider internal attorney elevations to partner.  While the diversity of partnership is important, the firm’s focus and actions go beyond looking at quantitative data related to representation in each class of elevated attorneys.  We are focused on what the candidates for elevation have done and are doing at the firm to make Goodwin a more inclusive and equitable firm. By intentionally asking the candidates and their respective practice area leads and other partners about the candidates’ actions to foster a more inclusive and equitable firm, Goodwin is signaling to current and future partners the importance of these values to the firm. This approach embeds the ideas of inclusivity and equity into how we all approach our jobs and interact with each other.  

Theresa DeLoach: When it comes to equity in pay and evaluation, I think diverse lawyers are starting to feel more comfortable speaking up about moments of victory as well as feelings of discontent around opportunity. That is a major step forward because in the past people would just quietly leave and go somewhere else. Now that the firm is really going all in on these efforts, there is a willingness to start to speak up and there are platforms and avenues in which diverse lawyers can do that.

Chambers Associate: In which ways do you feel this increased emphasis on equity will aid the key stages of the recruitment, retention and promotion of diverse individuals within law firms?

Rob Insolia: I believe the focus in the legal industry too often has been on diversity at the expense of equity and inclusion. Yes, we want to onboard a more diverse pool of people. But if we want sustainable diversity, we need to ensure that everyone in the Goodwin community feels they belong (which is what inclusion is all about) and that everyone has the opportunity to be successful in a way that is authentic to who they are.

Yakiry Adal: Effectuating equity within the firm requires that we work with our Business Units and GO! Team departments to identify where the gaps are, find the opportunities to create change and set goals for ourselves, and then measure our progress against those goals over time. What is predictive of success in law firms is how much mentoring, developmental feedback, training and sponsoring that you have. So we’re examining our talent systems to figure out how we can best ensure that everybody has access to good mentoring, critical feedback, training, and support across every stage in their career. 

"I believe the focus in the legal industry too often has been on diversity at the expense of equity and inclusion."

Calvin Wingfield: Goodwin has revamped the way it evaluates associates and other non-partner attorneys thought its Attorney Review Committee.  We took out the subjective questions and made them more objective, and asked evaluators to give written examples to tease out unconscious bias. Our goal was to make sure that associates are reviewed based on who they are and what they bring to the firm, while also recognizing that everyone comes to Goodwin with different circumstances. So, we’re not just looking at the paper and saying this is how we’re going to assess this associate. There’s a discussion about each person recognizing everything they’ve brought to the table – including themselves and who they are – and then coming to a conclusion of what the assessment will be for a given year.

Tevia Pollard: We’ve started to be more expansive in the qualities we value when looking at talent and are using a more tailored-approach when we find diverse talent so that they feel comfortable here and want to be part of the firm.

Chambers Associate: How have you been raising awareness of the concept of equity in the diversity space? Which approaches/channels have been most effective at conveying the role of equity to the broader firm and beyond?

Rob Insolia: As I mentioned, we want Goodwin to be a place that is welcoming to everybody and where everybody feels comfortable. At the same time that we appropriately and necessarily over-index on groups that have been marginalized, we also strive to make sure that those who aren’t members of those groups feel engaged and part of that process. This approach makes our efforts more unified and ultimately more effective.  

Calvin Wingfield: The firm actively encourages attorneys to participate in pro bono work, especially in regards to initiatives that will affect social change. Really stemming from the suffrage movement, Goodwin has been involved in research, support and impact litigation aimed at continuing to shore up voter rights throughout the country. We did this  going into the 2020 election, and I see the firm doing the same thing again in connection with the bills in various states that could dramatically curtail voting rights. We’re not only participating in initiatives that the legal industry as a whole is taking on, but we’re also seeking out additional pro bono opportunities that will allow our attorneys to make an impact.

"Storytelling in the DEI space can serve to impact change because there’s a tendency to think that people here aren’t experiencing micro-aggressions or racism or any other -ism, that those things happen to other people or at other firms."

Yakiry Adal: We’ve been raising awareness of the need to focus on equity through data and through sharing the lived experience of our underrepresented communities. Many have solely leaned on data to determine whether a DEI initiative in an organization has been successful, but that’s only part of the picture.

Storytelling in the DEI space can serve to impact change because there’s a tendency to think that people here aren’t experiencing micro-aggressions or racism or any other -ism, that those things happen to other people or at other firms. The reality is that racism, sexism, and so on exist in all organizations. By helping people understand the lived experience of people of color, of women, of LGBTQ individuals, of differently-abled people, of those with intersecting identities, it becomes more human.

Tevia Pollard: I’m really excited about the new Women of Color initiative. It started in person before the pandemic and now we have virtual meetings every quarter. The firm has different affinity groups for lawyers of color and women, but when the intersectionality question comes up it’s difficult for those groups to adequately address the complications that can arise with belonging to more than one of those groups.

Theresa DeLoach: I’m also proud that we’ve added culture and innovation time, where lawyers can receive billable hour credit for activities that enhance firm culture, such as DEI. We thought the addition of culture and innovation time would help so many of our diverse lawyers not have to pay the tax that minority groups often face in terms of having to do meaningful work for which they’re not compensated.

Chambers Associate: Has this shift in focus to equity been mirrored by other businesses or clients? Has it led to any collaborations or initiatives to strengthen the message of/emphasis on equity in the corporate space?

Rob Insolia: In the visits that I have had with clients, I hear often how concerned they are about the racial and social inequities that are present not only within the legal industry but societally, and they want to partner on making things better.

Calvin Wingfield: My exposure in the client space involves responding to requests for proposals (RFPs) for matters and being on panels for outside counsel. It used to be that clients were saying ‘we want diverse teams and we want a commitment that you will give us a diverse team,’ but now they have questions that go specifically to what initiatives the firm has in place to achieve equity. These clients are expecting attorneys to be able to speak intelligently about what the firm is doing in terms of creating opportunities and how they have participated in supporting those initiatives.  

Yakiry Adal: The challenge is still whether our attorneys, and specifically our BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ attorneys, are getting access to the kind of career-enhancing work for our clients that they need to progress to partnership and equity partnership. Clients are starting to think more about who they turn to for those bet-the-company matters and which lawyers are getting the origination credit. These are tough questions, but I think many clients are starting to ask them. They want to expand the types of opportunities that can lead to sustainable change in our firm and the profession at large.

Tevia Pollard: We partner with certain clients on initiatives where General Counsel are seeking out law firms that care about equity, and we also sponsor diverse partners and associates to create opportunities for them to work with new clients. 

"These clients are expecting attorneys to be able to speak intelligently about what the firm is doing in terms of creating opportunities and how they have participated in supporting those initiatives."

Theresa DeLoach: We’ve had several conversations with clients who are at different points in the road. Some of our clients want to partner with us on doing better while others set standards that they expect us to live up too. So, we’re seeing it across the spectrum and I think the increased focus from clients really makes a difference. There are also programs that we’re introducing to help clients learn from other clients across industries. That’s important because most of our established clients already have DEI policies and procedures in place, but we need to be able to assist our emerging company clients who don’t have those same infrastructures. The fact that we’re working with clients in those spaces on these topics is really impactful.

Chambers Associate: To date, what has been the most successful change brought about by this increased emphasis on equity in the diversity space?

Rob Insolia: We have so much work to do and so much to accomplish that I’m not sure I would call any of our efforts a success – at least not yet. What I feel really good about is our willingness to look at our imperfections and our gaps and our shortcomings with respect to DEI and ask ourselves how we can do better. I believe that being self-critical is the precursor to innovation and bringing in new ideas. It’s really been a growing crescendo and our efforts have been increasing for the past ten years. I know that with our willingness to look at where we’ve come up short and our perseverance in those areas we will ultimately be in a much better place for it.

Tevia Pollard: The creation of the Black Anti-Racism Task Force (BATF), which is comprised of the Management Committee, our director of DEI, and Black partners, associates and GO! Team members, represents a major change at the firm. I was pleasantly surprised that leadership recognized the need for BATF without members of the Black community demanding it. Also, it’s great that associates, including myself before I was elevated to partner, have been involved with this group from the beginning. Often programs and policies are created for those who are not at the table to explain what would be most effective for them. The fact that I’m able to talk directly to firm leadership every three weeks is remarkable for DEI reasons, and it’s also giving many stakeholders in the organization direct access to the Management Committee.

Theresa DeLoach: I look at Sabrina Rose-Smith becoming the first Black female equity partner at the firm, and how her taking that step is a tremendous success. Because there could’ve been other people in that spot, the firm could’ve chosen other talented people, but they made sure that she was recognized for her countless contributions. I’m proud of the things that aren’t in writing, such as the phone calls from partners that care about me during what has been a difficult year. They might not always know exactly what to say, but just the fact they reached out to let me know they were thinking of me meant a great deal.

Chambers Associate: How has this more prominent focus on equity influenced law firms’ engagement with broader diversity issues in society? 

Calvin Wingfield: Goodwin’s internal self-assessments and discussions have opened the firm up to supporting organizations that seek to achieve greater equity in our communities and making broader proclamations externally. For example, we’ve seen our professional staff affinity group, BOLD, launch a Buy Black campaign. Firm employees were encouraged to patronize Black-owned businesses and the firm matched whatever money was spent through a donation to organizations supporting Black entrepreneurs.

The firm also launched a law school scholarship for graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities that is designed to increase the pipeline of Black students into the country’s top law schools and eventually in the profession at large.

Yakiry Adal: Companies have to be very careful about making statements that don’t match their culture. We want to make statements when it supports advancing change, but we don’t want to make statements when we’re not taking action in an area or when we’re not invested in an area.

We’ve made many unequivocal statements about where we stand with respect to hate and violence against communities of color, against women, against the LGBTQ community, and others. I think that is all consistent in keeping with how we’re thinking about DEI within the firm. We want it to be clear that we stand against all discrimination and hate. Once that’s established, we then need to support these words through our actions, and that requires addressing the other principles we’ve been focusing on to create equity within the organization.

"I think we’ve been good at being able to recognize moments where we need to say something. This is about being more empathetic and more understanding when it comes to what our diverse population of attorneys and staff are going through."

Tevia Pollard: I think we’ve been good at being able to recognize moments where we need to say something. This is about being more empathetic and more understanding when it comes to what our diverse population of attorneys and staff are going through. Because there are days where things are happening in the media and we’re getting bombarded with news, and it’s difficult to go back to advising your clients as though nothing is going on. Seeing Goodwin leaders reaffirm their stance against hatred and discrimination does matter. 

Chambers Associate: How might this increased emphasis on equity continue to improve law firm diversity in the future? Where can equity take diversity efforts in the future?

Rob Insolia: Whether we focus on our systems or how we’re dealing with people on a one-to-one basis, at the end of the day equity is about ensuring that each individual has real, tangible opportunities for success. That’s going to come through a combination of recruitment, mentorship, sponsorship, client contact and the myriad of things that we have to improve. But it still all funnels down to ensuring that whether someone is a queer Black woman or a straight white male they each feel they belong at Goodwin and they each have the opportunities and encouragement to reach their full potential.

"it still all funnels down to ensuring that whether someone is a queer Black woman or a straight white male they each feel they belong at Goodwin and they each have the opportunities and encouragement to reach their full potential."  

Calvin Wingfield: For associates, it’s about taking a harder look at how work is assigned and ensuring that all associates are given equal opportunity for career enhancing matters and tasks. I co-chair the Committee for Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CRED) at the firm, and that’s something we try to do informally by supporting associates of color in finding those meaningful opportunities. After engaging with the Management Committee on this issue, the firm is revamping our work-allocation policies and procedures to encourage more equitable distribution of work and to discourage and greatly stomp out “hallway staffing” and other practices that can disproportionately impact attorneys from marginalized groups. 

Yakiry Adal: Some organizations can't move the needle on DEI because they assign the job to the DEI team. This work requires systemic and cultural change at all levels within an organization, which is why we aim to have everyone clearly understand their role and how they can create or sustain DEI advances. It needs to be led from the top and practiced by every leader in the organization, intentionally and consistently. There have to be clear expectations and accountability measures in place for leaders and resources available for those who need more support in terms of education or coaching to fill the role the firm is asking of them. This is about optimizing talent management and effectively leading teams for the benefit of all members of the organization.

Tevia Pollard: In terms of our initiatives moving forward, we have amazing programs, but it’s about making equity pervasive across the entire firm. We already have critical buy in from the highest levels of Goodwin, as our Chair, Chair Elect and Managing Partner have repeatedly demonstrated that this is a priority. So, now, we need to make sure that every partner, associate and GO! Team member throughout the organization understands the importance of making equity a priority. Because even if we have support from the very top of the organization, all of the other levels within the firm still need to have these principles and goals top of mind when they make decisions that will directly affect someone’s career or day-to-day experience.

Theresa DeLoach: We need to wholeheartedly examine our entire structure and make sure that those diverse voices are there because they will only make our institution better.

Read more about associate life at Goodwin here.