At Baker Donelson, we strive to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all our employees. We welcome people of all races, genders, gender identities or expressions, ages, languages, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, disabilities, sexual orientations and religious beliefs to assist our clients in achieving their legal goals.
We understand and salute the unique perspectives and approaches that are provided by differences in educational background, socio-economic background, personality profile, geographic location, job duties, marital and family status.
Our goal is to create an atmosphere at our Firm that honors the diverse quality in each of our employees. Meeting once a month, the Committee is charged with overseeing and implementing the Firm's diversity initiatives.
In cultivating different ideas and perspectives, we strive to exceed expectations by encouraging and supporting our attorneys in activities that promote diversity, and we engage in many activities and organizations to encourage inclusion:
- We annually award three recipients the Baker Donelson Diversity Scholarship, which offers law students a salaried second-year Summer Associate position and $20,000 to help defray the cost of tuition and related expenses.
- We participate in the Nashville Bar Association High School Internship Program, which has led to us hiring a high school student every year since 2008.
- We regularly co-sponsor the Minority Enterprise Development (MED) Week and other similar events. Each event provides a forum to discuss the continued growth and development of minority business enterprises.
- We conduct regular mandatory diversity and inclusion training for the entire Firm, covering a variety of topics.
- We are participating members in the Atlanta and Nashville Stonewall Bar Associations, and are active in LGBT business organizations.
We understand that changes will not be achieved by good intentions alone. In order to achieve meaningful, measurable and lasting progress toward greater inclusion of diverse legal talent, it is necessary for us to not only commit philosophically to those goals, but also to commit resources, individually and collectively, toward activities that we believe will have a positive impact.
At the beginning of the Firm's diversity initiative, in 2002, we had seven minority attorneys. We outlined a goal of increasing our minority attorney population by 100 percent in two years, and we met it. Today, we have more than 100 minority attorneys and more than 250 women attorneys and continue to strive to attract and retain diverse talent.
- We actively recruit at historically African-American law schools, such as Texas Southern University and Howard University. Our individual office Recruiting Committees and Diversity Committee work simultaneously to deepen the breadth of candidates.
- Our summer associate program has experienced a steady growth of diverse students, which increases our growth in associate hiring.
- We continue to build our mentoring program for our diverse associates and are preparing them for leadership positions throughout our Firm.
- We have created an initiative to reach out to diverse undergraduate students to help them achieve their goal of entering the legal field. "Bringing Diversity to Our Businesses" is led by two female minority attorneys, demonstrating our dedication to encourage more minorities to attend law school and our commitment to grow leaders from within our own ranks.
Baker Donelson's COO and president is a woman, and female attorneys currently chair two of our four practice departments. Females also chair eight of our 16 practice groups and serve as three of our 18 managing shareholders. Five female and two minority shareholders serve on the board of directors, and numerous committees are chaired by minority and female lawyers.
Diversity is engrained in our culture and is an implemented aspect of attorney and shareholder retreats; Baker Donelson attorneys and clients increasingly desire and expect a diverse team of attorneys to be engaged in the Firm's work.
We have implemented a flex-time policy for our attorneys, allowing lawyers to deviate from the standard billable-hour format. We support the desire of our attorneys to balance a challenging professional career with their personal lives and other outside interests and responsibilities.
We have not completed our journey. Baker Donelson attorneys continue to seek leadership opportunities and to encourage our attorneys to be active in the community.