WASHINGTON — Oct. 18, 2022
BakerHostetler is pleased to announce that the firm has achieved Mansfield 5.0 Certification after a rigorous yearlong program intended to boost and sustain diversity in law firm leadership.
Mansfield aims to increase and sustain diversity in leadership within law firms by broadening the pool of women lawyers, LGBTQ+ lawyers, lawyers with disabilities, and lawyers from underrepresented racial and/or ethnic groups who are considered for senior lateral attorney job openings, firm governance and client opportunities, equity partner promotions, and firm leadership positions. Firms must also create and publish job descriptions and appointment/election policies for leadership roles. To achieve Mansfield 5.0 Certification, BakerHostetler collaborated with Diversity Lab over a 12-month certification period with built-in measurement, transparency and accountability mechanisms.
BakerHostetler Chairman Paul Schmidt said, “As a firm, we are continually looking for ways to build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Participating in the Mansfield Certification process was an easy decision, and we are thrilled to achieve certification in our first year. We are committed to the Mansfield program as well as a number of other efforts to address diversity in our firm.”
“It takes a lot of work for firms to make even incremental changes to long-standing systems, and it is an absolute honor for the Diversity Lab team to see what these firms have achieved over the course of the yearlong certification cycle,” said Kavita Ramakrishnan, Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Rule and Knowledge Sharing Senior Director. “The firms enthusiastically engaged with Mansfield’s rigorous challenges while sharing learnings with each other to ensure a collective win.”
BakerHostetler has demonstrated its commitment to inclusion and diversity through targeted recruiting of women and minorities at all levels, representation of women and minority lawyers in management of the firm, its Paul D. White Diversity Scholars Program and other diversity pipeline programs, its strategic partnerships with organizations dedicated to improving inclusion in the legal profession, its use of gender pronouns, its diversity-focused pro bono work, and its deep support of related organizations in the communities where its attorneys and staff live and work.
The Mansfield Certification follows other recent acknowledgments of BakerHostetler’s efforts in workplace equality. In July, BakerHostetler received Meta Legal’s 2022 Outside Counsel Diversity Champions award, and in February, the firm announced that it received a score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2022 Corporate Equality Index for the third consecutive year.
Additional information about the Mansfield Rule can be found here: Mansfield Rule Overview – Diversity Lab.
For more information, visit https://www.bakerlaw.com/diversity/firmdiversity. Connect with us on Twitter @BakerHostetler or on LinkedIn @BakerHostetler, @PaulSchmidt.
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About BakerHostetler
With hundreds of highly ranked attorneys across multiple practice areas, BakerHostetler helps clients around the world address their most complex and critical business and regulatory issues, delivering sophisticated counsel and outstanding client service. The firm has six core practice groups – Business, Digital Assets and Data Management, Intellectual Property, Labor and Employment, Litigation, and Tax – composed of more than 1,000 lawyers located coast to coast. For more information, visit bakerlaw.com.