Law Firm Culture: Inclusion Is Not Assimilation

There has been a spotlight on diversity and inclusion efforts in the legal profession over the last several years. Clients are requiring that law firms make a concerted effort to have the racial demographics of their attorneys more closely reflect the country’s population. The biggest impediment to achieving true diversity, though, does not lie in a failure to recruit diverse attorneys. The failure is in retaining diverse attorneys. And the biggest impediment to retaining diverse attorneys is inclusion.

More often than not, attorneys, regardless of race, leave law firms because of culture, not because of workload or compensation. Therefore, firms must learn how to emphasize true inclusion to have a long-term impact on their diversity profile.