Leading A Law Practice To Excellence

Author : Leah Teague
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (137 download)

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Download or read book More Diverstiy Requires More Inclusive Leaders Leading by Example in Law Organizations written by Leah Teague and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Article addresses several critically important issues facing the legal profession--first, the need for greater efforts to enhance diversity and inclusion in law firms and legal organizations; and second, the need for better leadership by lawyers in effecting meaningful change in the composition of the legal profession. In this Article, we argue that while there have been impressive, positive steps taken to make law firms more supportive of the diverse workforces that they employ, more must be done to address the challenges of insufficient diversity of professional staff in law firms and other law practice organizations and, equally disappointing, the insufficient efforts to enhance inclusion of members of groups underrepresented in the legal profession. Institutional goals of diversity and inclusiveness are different concepts that require different initiatives and planning, but both are fundamentally important to all types of law organizations--law firms, corporate counsel offices, government law departments, legal education--and to the future of the legal profession.The Article begins with an examination on why diversity and inclusion efforts are important to the legal profession. Normally, we would not think that this topic would be controversial, but the facts are that law firms are woefully behind on efforts in both of these areas. Part III examines the reasons why vision-driven leadership is critical to the success of any effort to enhance diversity and meaningful sense of inclusion in law practice settings. Part IV of this Article considers the results of law organizations'--principally law firms'--efforts at enhancing diversity including recent survey results published by National Association of Law Placement (“NALP”) on changes to law firm diversity. Part IV also describes some of the reasons that diversity efforts have failed or have not resulted in appreciable gains to the law firm environment. Part V of this Article considers the importance of leadership to the success of the diversity effort and how law firm leaders can advance goals of greater inclusion and diversity in their organizations. The fundamental lesson of this Article is about the instrumental importance of leadership to the advancement of goals of great diversity in the profession.