Why Diversity Matters in the Selection and Engagement of Outside Counsel

• Author: Dev Stahlkopf
• Pages: 37-42

37VOL 46 | NO 3 | SPRI NG 2020

Why Diversity Matters

in the Selection and Engagement

of Outside Counsel:

An In-House Counsel’s Perspective

DEV STAHLKOPF

The author is corporate vice president and general counsel at Microsoft.

The case for the importance of diversity and inclusion starts with

a simple truth: Every person has inherent value and deserves

an equal opportunity. All people have rich identities, life expe -

riences, passions, and skills. That combination creates unique

perspectives and potential that deserve a fair chance to be real-

ized, irrespective of gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation,

disability, or other traits or characteristics. We are at our best

when we enable this equal opportunity, and we are falling far

short of our potential when we leave people and communities

behind. Research demonstrates that diversity makes us more in-

novative and more creative, enables better decision making, and

results in deeper, more effective engagement with customers.

Despite the clear benefits of diversity, and despite the fact that

the United States continues to become more and more diverse

each year, progress to increase diversity in the legal profession

has been slow, with only small gains for women and almost none

for most minority groups over the last decade.

Real, meaningful, and sustained progress will require all of us

to work together across the legal industry, innovate, and share

learnings and insights openly to help us all improve. We each

must start by focusing on diversity within our own organizations

and then also look for ways we can advance diversity by working

with others in the industry.

For those of us in corporate legal departments, one way

in which we can do this is by dedicating a percentage of our

outside counsel budget to women- and minority-owned law firms.

Another is by working with our outside counsel to increase the

diversity at their firms, to increase the number of diverse attor-

neys who are working on our legal matters, and to continuously

innovate on diversity initiatives and programs. While the lack

of diversity in the profession is by no means a law firm problem

alone, law firm diversity is an important area of focus, given that

most attorneys in the United States practice in law firms. It is

only by working together that we will be able to unlock the op-

portunity to accelerate progress at scale.

The legal profession continues to lag behind other indus-

tries in diversity and behind the diversity of the United States

overall, whether for women, minorities, or other diverse groups.

L360, G C R (2019); L360, D

S (2019); Terry Carter, The Biggest Hurdle for Lawyers

with Disabilities: Preconceptions, ABA J., June 1, 2015. In this year’s

10-Year Trend in Lawyer Demographics, the ABA reported that since

2009, the number of women in the profession rose about five per-

centage points from roughly 31 to 36 percent. While this reflects

some progress, it still represents a shortfall of roughly 189,000

women in the profession. More tellingly, if the growth rate of the

representation of women continues to increase at this modest pace,

equal representation will not be achieved for another 28 years.

The 10-year trend for racial and ethnic minorities was even

more bleak, where progress in proportional representation was