CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This week’s annual meeting of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) will be the most heavily attended in the six-year-old organization’s history.
LCLD is comprised—primarily and uniquely—of the general counsel of Fortune 500 corporations and the managing partners of the nation’s leading law firms. Its goal is to diversify the highest levels of leadership in the legal profession.
96 GCs, and MPs are expected to attend the meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago representing such organizations as Walmart, United Health Group, Fannie Mae, Skadden, K&L Gates, and Latham & Watkins.
The meeting will be chaired by Brad Smith, recently named president of Microsoft Corporation; Smith, who has served as LCLD Board Chair since 2014, is recognized as a national leader in advancing legal diversity.
In attendance will be 179 diverse young attorneys, who are participants in one of LCLD’s most successful initiatives, the LCLD Fellows Program, chosen by their firms and corporations as high-potential, next-generation leaders in the profession. 814 diverse attorneys have participated in the Fellows program.
Smith is expected to share research that demonstrates advances in the careers of LCLD Fellows. Among those findings:
- Unlike their counterparts elsewhere in the profession, LCLD Fellows report little to no sense of social isolation in their professional lives.
- 90 percent of Fellows report that LCLD has been valuable in enhancing their relationships with leaders of their organizations.
- In a growing trend, nearly half of Fellows have referred work to each other.
- In the past few years, four Fellows Alumni . . . three General Counsel and one Managing Partner . . . have become LCLD Members, adding to the number of Alumni who have risen to positions of leadership in the profession.
- Of LCLD 1L Scholars (first-law students) who’ve graduated, 90 percent are now employed full-time in positions for which bar admission is required.
The day-long meeting will explore how rapid changes in the profession and critical aspects of leadership provide new opportunities for the diverse attorneys who participate in LCLD’s professional development programs.
“We’ve come to describe that future, and our response to it, as ‘Vision 2020—Shaping the Future,’” said Robert J. Grey, Jr., LCLD’s president and a partner at Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Virginia. “It’s a term that encompasses not only the explosive growth of our LCLD programs, but also the profound changes in American society and the way law will be practiced in the future.”
Martha Minow, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean of Harvard Law School and an expert on legal issues related to gender, minorities, and civil and human rights, will address the group.
For more information, contact: joe.slay@slaycommunications.com, 804.350.7089 or visit www.lcldnet.org.
