Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Content

Navigating Implicit Bias in Remote Work

Discrimination in the workplace can lead to costly lawsuits, settlements and fines. Yet the era of remote work has made eliminating bias more complicated. How can today’s business and organizational leaders protect their enterprises and ensure a fair and healthy workplace for all? The answer is to foster a healthy, inclusive culture.

Battling Imposter Syndrome

Feelings of inadequacy aren’t uncommon in legal professions. We explore where they come from — and how to combat them.

Planning for DEIA Success: Creating a Vision Board for Your Firm’s DEIA Goals

As legal administrators, we’re no strangers to planning ahead and setting goals. Amid all our responsibilities, one topic that should be top of mind is diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA). 

How Your Firm Can Benefit from a Supplier Diversity Program

Wouldn’t it be great if you could look at the important values and goals of your company and match those with a supplier and/or a third-party vendor? Fortunately, through a supplier diversity program (SDP), you can! 

The Importance of Diverse Leadership in Legal Administration

In the arena of legal administration, where decisions wield influence over justice and society, the composition of leadership carries profound implications. Within this landscape, a growing recognition of the significance of diversity has started to play a pivotal role in shaping law firm leadership. 

Thinking Outside the Legal Recruiting Box

As law firms struggle to hire legal assistants, legal administrators are finding creative ways to get recruits in the door.

Retooling Your Firm for Gen Z

Understanding what motivates this incoming workforce will be key to attracting (and retaining them) at your firm.

Give the Gift of Inclusion This Holiday Season

Why should we wait for the holiday season each year to openly express love, joy, peace and a desire to share our time with others? This should be our goal as ALA members and members of the legal profession all 12 months of the year. Let’s explore ways to heighten our awareness of others, starting today.

Using Your Employees’ Preferred Pronouns Helps Build Your Firm’s Inclusivity

Nobody likes to be misnamed or misgendered. Referring to someone by an incorrect pronoun may leave a person feeling disrespected, invalidated and even dismissed. This can affect a person’s mental health if they begin to feel stressed and undervalued.

Creating a Culture of Belonging by Implementing a Robust Onboarding and Integration Strategy

Imagine attending a party that you were invited to where the host is too busy to come over and say hello. While you walk around, mingle with other guests and manage to have a good time, you don’t feel welcomed.  

Measuring Your Firm by DEI Standards

In the scientific world, a jar of peanut butter goes through standardized tests before it “earns” its label. So, for us in the legal industry, as we work to advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), what is the standard? How do we know if our DEI goals are too far-fetched or aiming too low? Are we underserving our fellow colleagues in historically disadvantaged groups?

How to Build a Meaningful Pride Campaign (And Why It’s Important)

Ready to make your firm’s Pride campaign have more meaning this year? Here’s how to put some extra value into it.

Understanding and Enriching Neurodiversity Hiring

The brain really is a wonder. In any given day at any given moment, it’s sending signals throughout your body to do everything from breathing and talking to helping you think and process the information you are reading in this very article. All these actions are the results of signals passing through neurons. With so much at work, it’s not at all surprising that some signals pass through differently for some humans.

4 Ways to Nurture — and Retain — a Diverse Team of Associates

Having a diverse, equitable, inclusive and accessible (DEIA) work environment is a core value that can and should become part of a law firm’s DNA.  

Embrace the Power of Mentorship

Most of us can think back in our career to that one person that helped guide us to where we are today. For some of us, it was the person who asked you the tough questions to help you make a big decision. For others, it was the person who introduced us to others and helped us to expand our network. 

Address Bias When Determining Resource Allocation and Performance Management

Unconscious or implicit biases can affect our behavior and decisions in the workplace without us even realizing it. It’s natural to have biases — and we all have them. But there are major consequences if we remain unaware of them and let them affect our decision-making in life and in the workplace. 

Keep Your Firm’s Diversity Initiatives on Track in the New Year

The discussion surrounding diversity goals and initiatives has been one of the most rapidly growing topics among human resource professionals in law firms within the past five years. 

Beyond the Bar Exam: Competence Frameworks for Associate Development

You’ve probably heard about the tidal wave of anger and frustration besieging the bar exam lately. Accusations that the exam is outdated, unvalidated, irrelevant to practice competence, systemically racist and sexist, and  callously administered seem to come faster and more furiously each year.

Diversity Efforts Also Must Include Development for Legal Support Staff

The legal industry is booming. But it’s also an employee’s market, which means legal organizations — just like other industries — are struggling to hire. When looking to retain support staff — such as paralegals, administrative assistants and marketing professionals — firms should first lift up and learn from those within their own ranks. 

4 Ways Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Helps Firms Prosper (and How to Achieve It)

Within the legal industry, organizations are taking steps toward making their workplaces more diverse and putting a greater emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In fact, major firms have recently voiced a desire for more personnel diversity, including creating positions such as chief diversity officers. 

Best Practices for Making Your Law Firm More Inclusive for People with Disabilities

Creating an inclusive workplace for people with disabilities should be a top priority for law firms — especially considering how many individuals in the firm may be living with a disability or may develop one in the future. Unfortunately, many law firms overlook this critical demographic when crafting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and programming. 

Embracing Neurodiversity in Legal

Neurodiversity — especially ADHD — is quite prevalent in the legal industry, but few know how to address it. Casey Dixon of Dixon Life Coaching and Krista Larson of Stinson LLP joined Legal Management Talk to discuss Stinson’s new program to promote well-being among attorneys and staff with ADHD, as well as what firms can do to help make life easier for employees with executive function disorders.   

Imposter Syndrome in Legal (and Life)

Imposter syndrome — we all experience it in our daily lives. Talking about it is one way to get through it. We did just that with Roberta Bauer, Regional Office Administrator of Ogletree Deakins and 2023-2024 Chair of ALA’s Professional Development Advisory Committee. Plus, find out the solid advice The Berenstain Bears offer for working through feelings of insecurity.  

Building an Inclusive Workplace

Creating a diverse and inclusive culture can put your firm ahead of your competition in both recruitment and business development. Terry Isner, Owner and Chief Executive Officer of Jaffe PR, joins us to discuss what that looks like in action and share his experience as a gay man working in the legal industry. Tune in for his insight into how to encourage your employees to bring their whole selves to work, especially in circumstances such as client pitches and meetings. 

Supporting the LGBTQ+ Community in June — and Beyond

What does it mean to build a meaningful Pride campaign at your firm? We sat down to discuss this topic with Laurence Winters, Chief Community Officer, SurePoint Technologies, and Chair, ALA’s Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. Through a vulnerable and honest account of his own struggles growing up as a gay man, Winters puts a face to why supporting the LGBTQ+ community in your legal organization is critical all year long. Plus, we chat about the benefits and joy of being able to bring your whole, authentic self to work.

So You Call Yourself an Ally?

How are paper straws related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) efforts? Find out in the second of two Annual Conference-themed episodes, featuring David Sarnoff, Esq., ACC, and Joy Stephens, MBA, of Loeb Leadership. They preview their presentation, “Performative vs. Authentic Allyship,” and we discuss what it means to be a DEIA ally, as well as how DEIA initiatives have faltered as we get further removed from the social justice movement of 2020.