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LEGAL NEWS
Law Firms Increase Use of Diversity Managers
[Gina Passarella, The Legal Intelligencer]
February 2, 2007 — The country’s largest law firms are increasingly creating and filling the roles of diversity managers and committees, and the heads of those firms are taking more of an active role in the work those managers do, according to a survey by Altman Weil and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association.
Of the largest 200 firms, 50 percent of those that participated in the survey have a designated diversity manager, which is a 5.4 percent increase from the previous year.
Also increasing was the number of firms with diversity committees, rising from 93 percent last year to 96 percent for the latest survey.
About 67 percent of diversity managers now report to their firm’s managing partner or chairperson, an increase from 47 percent last year.
Of those who did not have a diversity manager, 47 percent said they do not plan to hire one in the next year, according to the survey results.
Stacy L. Hawkins, who recently joined Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll as the firm's first director of diversity, said she wasn't surprised to see law firms increasingly using a diversity manager role.
"It’s kind of like the salary increases," she said.
While the need for the position was born out of several factors, once one law firm hired a diversity director, it was like a domino effect, she said. Another part of the increase, Hawkins said, could be that firms are realizing they can’t afford the cost that comes along with such high attrition rates for minorities both in terms of dollars and value.
"The corporate call to action in 2004 and... highly public cases of law firms losing business... over their failure to actively engage themselves [around] diversity is also converting those who would not be among the converted," she said.
The survey also found that an increasing number — 67 percent — of diversity managers are lawyers in their firms, while 61 percent handle the role full time. About 29 percent of those managers who are lawyers have billable-hour requirements and are mainly expected to bill between 1,500 and 2,000 hours.
Virginia Grant Essandoh of Altman Weil conducted the survey and said that having a director who is full time is important and necessary.
Hawkins said the role of a diversity manager covers so many aspects, including business development, recruitment, client relations and professional-development issues. Each of these areas usually has one person to head them up, let alone one person to handle all of them, she said.
According to the survey, diversity managers serve in a variety of roles, including involvement in the lawyer/staff hiring process (67 percent), recruiting committee (58 percent), professional-development committee (39 percent), associate-relations committee (36 percent), associate-review committee (33 percent), compensation committee (14 percent) and partner-review committee (11 percent).
The role of the diversity manager is fairly new, with 31 percent serving in their role for less than a year and 54 percent having held the position for between one and three years, according to the survey.
Hawkins said that while it is dependent upon the firms in terms of how much stock is put into the position, she said at least the first year of the role is spent evaluating and coming up with a game plan. It may take at least that long to see results, she said, adding that the most important thing is to develop benchmarks to monitor the success of the program.
There is a saying among her peers that "diversity is a marathon; it is not a sprint," Hawkins said.
The primary areas of responsibility for diversity managers, according to the survey, are to develop, promote and implement diversity goals and strategies, and to promote awareness of diversity issues within the firm.
Other top jobs include managing external outreach programs and collaborating with corporate clients on diversity initiatives. The lowest-ranked job priority is establishing mentoring programs, according to the survey.
"While most firms have mentoring programs, apparently, they are not linking them with their diversity initiatives," Essandoh said in a statement. "This is a missed opportunity to improve job satisfaction and retention efforts for women and minority lawyers."
Essandoh said the first step in making a difference through diversity programs is to hire the diversity manager, and the second step is to give them a budget to get things done.
The total budget allocation to support the position — including the manager's salary — was an average of $513,500. Seventy-eight percent of diversity managers have staff support, with an average 1.6 staff positions reporting to them, according to the survey.
The average annual total cash compensation for diversity managers in the survey was reported at $217,012. Diversity managers who are lawyers take home an average $255,000, while nonlawyer professionals earn $149,478, according to the results.
This is the second survey on diversity directors and committees done by Altman Weil and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Essandoh said she had a lot of interest from diversity directors about the average budgets and staff allocations.
Survey data was collected in December and January from Am Law 200 law firms, with 37 percent participating (72 of 196 firms solicited).
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