Dean's Diversity Council
Deans’ Diversity Council calls for Cultures of Inclusion in the Legal Profession
Top leadership around Colorado is teaming up to develop and implement innovative measures aimed at diversifying the legal profession. Recent U.S. Census data placed the legal profession at the bottom of the list of professions in terms of diversity, with minorities comprising only 9.7 percent of all lawyers across the country. In Colorado, the percentage of diverse attorneys is even lower, coming in at 6.9 percent.
Well aware of these shortcomings, DU Law Dean Beto Juárez and CU Law Dean David Getches gathered a group of leaders representing all sectors of the legal profession including education, private practice, bar associations, the public sector, corporate departments, and the judiciary, to form the Deans’ Diversity Council in 2006. Their ambitious agenda included long-term volunteer commitments to research and strategize effective recruitment and retention of diverse attorneys, a major 2007 survey of Colorado’s legal community which was sent to over 5,000 Denver-area attorneys, and the development of the Rocky Mountain Legal Diversity Summit, which was held in Denver in September 2007.
Well-intentioned traditional diversity initiatives have sought to improve diversity in the legal profession but have fallen short seemingly due to their failure to address a larger, more deeply embedded culture of exclusion. The vision statement of the Deans’ Diversity Council encourages Denver metro law firms and corporate legal departments to create cultures of inclusion by the year 2016 where “attorneys of all backgrounds succeed without regard to gender, race, religion, national origin, disability or sexual orientation.” This encourages firms to move beyond addressing demographic numbers and instead, implement best practices at their workplaces that will benefit all employees, including those with diverse backgrounds.
From this vision, the Colorado Campaign for Inclusive Excellence (CCIE) was developed to support efforts and provide resources directed towards building inclusive cultures within legal organizations. At the 2008 Rocky Mountain Legal Diversity Conference, held in March and hosted by DU Law, a working draft of the CCIE’s six-step process to transforming cultures was introduced. Since that conference, a handful of legal organizations have committed to pilot the program, which calls for a reexamination of current business procedures including, policies, physical environment, professional development, budgeting, and diversity programs involving recruiting and marketing.
For more information on the Colorado Campaign for Inclusive Excellence, visit www.colegaldiversity.org.
