August.20.2018
The Diversity Lab announced today the results of the Mansfield Rule pilot – and we are excited to be one of 27 firms to achieve Mansfield Certification Plus. Certification Plus indicates that a firm not only meets or exceeds the pipeline consideration requirements for Mansfield Rule Certification, but also has reached at least 30 percent women and minority lawyer representation in a notable number of current leadership roles and committees.
“We are incredibly grateful to Caren Ulrich Stacy and the Diversity Lab for leading the Mansfield Rule through its incredibly successful first year. It’s hard to think of a legal diversity program that has brought about more widespread and concrete change in as short a timeframe. And it’s exciting to see law firm and corporate legal departments working together to fix this problem,” said Orrick Chairman Mitch Zuklie.
Mansfield Rule Certification indicates that firms have affirmatively considered at least 30 percent women and attorneys of color for leadership and governance roles, equity partner promotions, and senior lateral positions. Participating law firms had to first establish a baseline metric by which they could assess and analyze their talent pipelines. The firms were then expected to create and adopt documentation and tracking norms to measure their progress and identify areas for improvement.
Because of achieving Mansfield Certification, Orrick’s recently promoted diverse partners will have the opportunity to attend a two-day Client Forum in late 2018 to build relationships with and learn from influential in-house counsel. More than 60 corporate legal departments have signed on to support this initiative.
Orrick will also participate in Mansfield 2.0, which will include LGBTQ+ lawyers and will measure diversity in allocation of business development opportunities.
The Mansfield Rule was one of the ideas generated at the Women in Law Hackathon, hosted by Diversity Lab in collaboration with Bloomberg Law and Stanford Law School in the spring of 2016. It is named for Arabella Mansfield, the first woman admitted to practice in the United States, and modelled after the NFL’s Rooney Rule.