Diversity Lab's new initiative to help law firms track diversity

Diversity Lab's new initiative to help law firms track diversity

Several US corporates legal departments have signed up to the inventive program to increase the diversity of their teams

The US tech firm Diversity Lab's new initiative to track and improve the diversity of their teams has seen 15 US corporate legal departments signing up for it.

The Move the Needle Fund program aims at boosting diversity, equity and inclusion through experimentation, accountability, transparency and result measurement to create a more diverse and legal profession. The entire process aims at simplifying the diversity data collection process for in-house teams while also setting out goals to boost the diversity of external counsel teams.

The initiative has set out five core metrics that measure how firms are progressing. These are known as the Diversity Dividends 5x5 Matrix and contain ensuring the overall makeup of teams including women lawyers, underrepresented racial and ethnic lawyers, lawyers with disabilities and LGBTQ+ lawyers.

Diversity Lab also judges the firms by the representation of lawyers that receive financial credit or rewards for working on the legal department's matters and the representation of lawyers that either lead the client relationship or lead individual matters.

Participating legal departments will have access to a dashboard that tracks how their firms are performing against the 5x5 metrics.

"The Diversity Dividends Collective 5x5 Matrix is specifically designed to address the power and economic gap in law firms where years of pledges, calls-to-action and letters signed by general counsel without financial incentives have fallen short. By bringing dozens of legal departments together to work in unison, we can drive change farther and faster," Leila Hock, Diversity Lab's director of legal department partnerships and inclusion initiatives, said.

The corporate legal departments that have signed up with it for the project include Gap, HP, US Bank, Arrow Electronics, Con Edison, Hillrom, Moffitt Cancer Center, PNC Bank, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Sunrun, SurveyMonkey and Xcel Energy.