Diversity at B&D
At Beveridge & Diamond, our differences from other law firms are at the core of our identity. So, it is only natural that we welcome and embrace the differences in our attorneys and employees. We have been committed to diversity from our inception as a firm, and we are renewing that commitment through a number of new and ongoing initiatives.
B&D’s unique culture arises from the fact that we are a small firm with a sophisticated practice focused on environmental law, land use, and litigation. Our work cuts across many different areas of the law, as well as a number of technical and other non-legal disciplines. As a result, we recognize and value the contributions of people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
We take pride in having a collegial, informal, and entrepreneurial environment where people are actively encouraged to be themselves, voice their own ideas, and chart their own paths. We continuously strive to enhance diversity in all aspects of the firm’s operations, and throughout each of our offices nationwide.
Attracting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce
Promoting Diverse Leadership
Balancing Work and Personal Time
Serving Minority Communities
Renewing Our Commitment
Diversity Contacts
Attracting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce
Recruiting. B&D is committed to building on our record of hiring a diverse group of lawyers of the highest caliber. We regularly participate in programs that provide an opportunity to recruit minority students and lateral candidates, such as meetings sponsored by the National Black Law Students Association, the National Bar Association, the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. We also have developed connections with the faculty at a number of law schools and with judges to augment and facilitate these efforts.
Professional Development. B&D recognizes the importance of training our attorneys on a variety of topics and ensuring that they develop close working relationships with more senior attorneys. We want all of our attorneys to thrive and succeed and we regularly review our practices and policies to enhance our attorneys’ professional development and overall work experience.
Incoming Summer Associates, Associates and more experienced attorneys all are provided mentors to help integrate them into the firm and guide them during their initial time with the firm. Subsequently, mentoring relationships between Principals and Associates, and among Associates and Of Counsel, routinely develop naturally as the attorneys work together. In other cases, mentors may be provided on a case-by-case basis to work with colleagues on particular aspects of their professional development. We consider mentoring a learning opportunity for everyone involved.
We believe that the best training generally comes through doing, and so we emphasize giving each attorney challenging and varied work from the start. However, we also supplement these efforts with more formal training, both in-house and through external sources such as the Environmental Law Institute’s “Boot Camp,” programs offered by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and various national, state and local Continuing Legal Education courses. We provide Associates timely and constructive feedback on individual projects in addition to conducting comprehensive performance reviews twice each year. These formal, semi-annual reviews also focus on the Associate’s professional development goals, progress, and strategy for the future. For more information, please see our description of Associate Life at the firm.
Promoting Diverse Leadership
Diverse Leaders in the Firm. B&D’s current Managing Principal, Benjamin F. Wilson, is an African American attorney who has practiced with the firm for over 26 years. Furthermore, B&D was one of the first major law firms based in Washington to have a female Managing Principal, who served in this capacity from 1996 to 2001. Women continue to serve in key leadership roles within the firm, including members of the Management Committee, the firm’s General Counsel, the founder and Managing Principal of the Austin office, and chairs of several committees (e.g., the Recruiting, Associates, Diversity, and Ethics Committees). Our Chief Operating and Financial Officers are women and serve on the Firm’s Management Committee. In addition to our inclusive approach to the firm’s executive leadership and firm management, a number of our women attorneys lead and/or co-chair some of our most successful practice teams. These prominent positions are not surprising, given that women represent approximately half of all attorneys at B&D. Women account for close to one-third of the Firm’s Principals, three quarters of the Firm’s Of Counsel, and more than half of the Associates.
Diverse Leaders in the Legal Profession and the Broader Community. B&D encourages and supports all its attorneys who pursue leadership roles outside the firm. Principals, Of Counsels, and Associates have served in a wide range of important positions throughout the legal profession, including the following:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute;
- Co-Chair of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs;
- Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Environmental Justice Committee;
- President of the Women’s Law Center of Maryland;
- Chairman of the National Bar Association Section on Environment, Energy, and Public Utilities;
- Chairs of several committees of the American Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources;
- Co-Chairs of the D.C. Bar Section on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources;
- Member of the Board of Directors for the D.C. Law Students in Court Program; and
- Adjunct Professors at various law schools (including Howard, Pace, and American Universities).
Because we are committed to playing a leadership role on diversity within the legal profession, we are reviewing ways in which we can respond to the recent ABA Goal IX Report for 2007-2008, which reports a decrease in minority representation within the Section on Environment, Energy and Resources in which many of our lawyers are active participants and leaders.
B&D attorneys also have had key roles in the broader community, including as Chairman of Healthy Babies, Inc., President of the National Symphony Orchestra Association, and Member of the Advisory Board of Teach for America/District of Columbia.
Balancing Work and Personal Time
Flexible Schedules and Reduced Hours. Our flexible hours policy is open to all attorneys. Many of our attorneys currently work or have previously worked flexible and/or reduced hours, based on their unique professional and personal goals. In fact, the Project on Attorney Retention has ranked our firm as having one of the highest usage rates for flex-time work among D.C. firms of all sizes (http://www.pardc.org/TheScoop/). These attorneys include Principals, Of Counsels and Associates, who continue to be an integral part of the firm and remain eligible for advancement while working reduced hours. We have promoted a number of Associates and Of Counsels to Principal while they were working part-time. For example, we recently promoted an Of Counsel working on a 70% schedule to Principal. Moreover, while both an associate and a young principal, our Managing Principal from 2001-2007 worked on a reduced schedule for a number of years after his first child was born. Additionally, our General Counsel currently works and for many years has worked four days a week in order to pursue her artistic interests.
Flexible Office Arrangements. Whenever possible, B&D allows attorneys to telecommute. Many of our attorneys work from home during some portion of the work week. On a number of occasions, when personal circumstances have required attorneys to move to locations where B&D does not have an office, the firm has made arrangements to enable them to continue working for the firm from their new homes. Examples include two Associates (both now Principals) and a Principal whose spouses had job opportunities in cities in which B&D did not have an office. In addition, beginning this summer, one of our associates will be spending the next year working from Israel.
Flexible Benefits. B&D offers a variety of generous benefits to help its attorneys and other employees manage personal and family issues. These benefits include group health and dental insurance for employees, families, and domestic partners; pre-tax flexible spending accounting for health care and child/dependent care; parental leave; life insurance; disability benefits; bereavement leave; and an Employee Assistance Program. The firm recently adopted a new maternity and parental leave policy to offer more generous benefits to support a family-friendly workplace. The firm currently offers 10 weeks of maternity leave plus an additional 6 weeks of parental leave for all employees, eligible immediately upon hire.
Serving Minority Communities
Inner City Youth. B&D developed, and for many years has taught, an 8-week course on environmental issues for an inner city elementary school in the District of Columbia. The firm also has been involved with the school in other ways, including attorney and staff contributions of time and money to refurbish the school library and donations of books and supplies. B&D was recently recognized for these efforts by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. The firm recently revised the course materials for the American Bar Association so that this successful program can be duplicated by other volunteers in schools throughout the country.
Persons with HIV/AIDS. For almost 15 years, B&D has provided significant pro bono legal assistance to clients of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which serves persons with HIV/AIDS throughout the Washington area. The firm has received several awards from the Clinic for establishing and staffing a counseling clinic on wills and estates, for accomplishments in litigation involving discrimination and privacy issues, and for the firm’s overall commitment to the Clinic.
Others. B&D has done countless work on behalf of individuals and groups in other minority and disadvantaged communities, including the physically disabled, mentally handicapped, migrant workers, abused women, the elderly, the homeless, immigrants, and racial minorities. For additional information on our commitment to this work, please see the description of our Pro Bono practice.
Renewing Our Commitment
Diversity Committee. B&D has a permanent Diversity Committee which has a broad mandate to review, improve, and monitor the firm’s progress on an ongoing basis and to develop, implement, and promote new diversity initiatives in all aspects of the firm’s operations. The Committee consists of Principals, Associates, Of Counsels, and Managers from throughout the firm’s practice areas and offices, and invites input from all attorneys and staff on a confidential basis through both formal and informal means. The Chair of the Diversity Committee is also a member of the Management Committee, which helps ensure that diversity issues receive attention at the highest level.
Independent Review of Diversity Efforts. To ensure that we have a sound and progressive strategy for promoting diversity, we worked with independent diversity consultants to assess our initiatives and accomplishments to date, to identify areas for further improvement, and to recommend specific strategies for the future. This review involved interviewing numerous attorneys within the firm about their perspectives, experiences, and suggestions. In addition, we solicited additional input from everyone in the firm, including support staff. We used the learning from this effort to develop a firm-wide, 12-hour diversity training program that includes experiential learning about implicit bias and other barriers to success widely cited in the literature on diversity in the legal profession. We also are using the results of our assessment process to review our core functions in attorney recruiting, work assignments, retention, professional development, mentoring, quality of life, and benefits to assess and make possible improvements that support diversity and inclusion. Our goal is to fully integrate diversity-driven “best practices” into all operations of our firm and to continuously expand our already inclusive culture.
We also provide ongoing learning opportunities on diversity and inclusion topics for lawyers and staff. We are implementing formal and informal processes to encourage our lawyers and employees to engage in an ongoing dialogue, or what we call, “Diversalogue®,” about diversity and inclusion. These efforts are designed to be “bottom up” to allow creative engagement, with direction and support from the Diversity and Management Committees.
Efforts to Increase Diversity in the Profession. As a leader in the area of environmental law, land use and litigation, B&D strives to provide leadership in promoting diversity within our profession. The firm has joined forces with Pfizer Incorporated to sponsor two paid summer internships for disadvantaged or underrepresented students at the Environmental Law Institute. We are working with ELI and Pfizer to develop permanent funding for these positions over time. In addition, our firm serves as a sponsor of the Environmental Justice in America Conference held at Howard University, which brings together environmental leaders from government, business, and academia from across the country. In 2008, we sponsored the Women’s Bar Association Initiative on Advancement and Retention of Women of Color. At the Initiative's one-day diversity summit, our managing partner spoke on the promotion of women of color in law firm leadership, and a B&D first-year associate helped publish the Initiative's Final Report: Creating Pathways for Success. B&D also participated in The Project for Attorney Retention’s ("PAR") first annual conference, where our Diversity Chair co-presented with our diversity consultant on B&D's unique approaches to creating a workplace that appreciates and cultivates diversity and inclusion. Most recently, our Managing Partner founded Partners of Color, and organization focused on creating a network for minority partners to share resources and support for one another. Partners of Color will also provide educational programs intended to address specific issues facing women of color, new minority associates and new partners of color.
Beveridge & Diamond also has served as a sponsor of Corporate Counsel Women of Color, Charting Your Own Course, and the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, all of which have as a primary purpose the development of professional opportunities for attorneys of color.
Diversity Contacts
We would be pleased to discuss our diversity programs and to answer your questions. Please contact Karen Hansen, who chairs B&D’s Diversity Committee, for more information at khansen@bdlaw.com or at (202) 789-6056.
