CHOATE HALL & STEWART LLP

commitment to diversity

Click Here to Listen to Macey Russell Speak at the Little Rock Nine Ceremony

At Choate, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment that welcomes, values and supports individuals of all backgrounds.  This commitment extends to every level and department of the firm.  Our goals are to recruit and promote a diverse group of attorneys and staff to ensure that we value and utilize the different experiences, perspectives and cultures that each member of our firm community brings to the table.  Increasing diversity at Choate not only strengthens us as an institution, but also enhances the services that we provide to our clients. 

Choate has a rich tradition of increasing diversity.  We were the first major law firm in Boston to promote women to equity partnership.  We are a founding member of the Boston Lawyers Group, and Choate partner Macey Russell, recently named a “Diversity Hero” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, played a lead role in forming the Boston Lawyers Group 1L Diversity Program and the Diversity Directory.  Choate partner Jack Cinquegrana, former president of the Boston Bar Association, helped form the Diversity and Inclusion Section of the Boston Bar Association.  As part of the firm’s focus on linking diversity initiatives with the pro bono program, we continue to strengthen our unique collaboration with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, under the leadership of Professor Charles J. Ogletree.

To achieve our diversity goals, the firm has a standing Diversity Committee comprised of lawyers and non-lawyers, which is co-chaired by one of the firm’s Managing Partners.  Choate works with a nationally renowned diversity consultant who conducted a workplace diversity assessment, helped us formulate a Diversity Action Plan and training on the Plan, and now helps us update and execute the Plan.  The firm has three priority areas around which to build.  These are:

recruitment, promotion and retention of persons of color and members of the GLBT community

Our Legal Hiring Department aggressively pursues talented, diverse candidates from the nation’s leading law schools.  In 2008, we reinvigorated our efforts to increase diversity – with terrific success.  Our 2009 Summer Associate Class consisted of two-thirds women and fifty percent diversity law students – which includes students of color and students from the GLBT community.  Our success can be linked to a number of factors, including having senior management (such as managing partners and “Diversity Hero” Macey Russell) engaged in recruiting efforts; ensuring that our Hiring Committee represents a range of diverse attorneys; having women attorneys available to meet with and mentor women recruits; hosting a “Diversity Dinner” for students of color who received offers to join our Summer Program; and the 2008 Summer Program itself, which included one-third diversity law students.  We celebrated the diversity of the 2009 Summer Class with diversity-based events, including a “Pride Week” dinner in Boston’s South End and an attorneys of color dinner at the House of Blues. 

Choate hosts a reception for members of the “Little Rock Nine”

We continue to be very active in the Boston Lawyers Group, a consortium dedicated to enhancing recruitment and retention of attorneys of color.  Working with our clients, we were instrumental in helping to establish the Boston Lawyers Group 1L Diversity Program, which offers law students of color the opportunity to spend one half of their summer working at a major law firm like Choate and the other half working inside a major corporation.  This Program provides attorneys of color with a valuable experience after their first year of law school so that they are better prepared to secure a summer associate position after their second year of law school.

We also actively support affinity group-based law associations.  Our attorneys play leadership roles in the American Bar Association’s Minority Counsel Program, the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association, the Massachusetts and National Hispanic Bar Associations, the Asian American Lawyers Association, the South Asian American Law Students Association and the Women’s Bar Association.

retention and promotion of women attorneys

As the first major law firm in Boston to elect women to its equity partnership, Choate has a long-standing commitment to hiring, retaining and promoting women attorneys.  Over the years, the firm has taken several important steps to create a working environment and culture that facilitates the success of women attorneys at every level of practice.  One of the most effective strategies that we have implemented is a workable part-time policy that strikes a fair balance among the needs of our attorneys, their families, our clients and the firm.  Nearly one-third of Choate’s women attorneys work on a part-time basis and remain on partnership track.  Recently, women working part-time and on maternity leave have been promoted to partnership.  Another effective program is the firm’s Parental Leave Liaison Program, which helps lawyers plan their leaves, smooth their return transitions and structure their part-time arrangements.  The firm also subsidizes on-site emergency day care, as well as home child and elder care.  We have developed a Women's Affinity Group, which offers programming, marketing opportunities and mentoring to all women attorneys; and we have refocused our lateral recruiting efforts on senior women attorneys. 

While each of these programs is effective, taken together they enable Choate to continue to support women attorneys at every stage of life and practice.

diversity awareness and improving communication across the firm

As part of its efforts, the Diversity Committee sponsors a number of valuable seminars, workshops and presentations for the firm’s attorneys and staff.  Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, recently spoke to the attorneys and Summer Associates about the historic Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia M. Sotomayor.  He also spoke to the 2008 Summer Class about the “school to prison pipeline project” and the firm’s work on its behalf.  Governor Deval Patrick, former General Counsel of Coca Cola and Texaco, and former Assistant Attorney General in charge of Civil Rights in the Clinton administration, spoke to the firm on diversity in corporate America.  David Hall, former Dean of Northeastern University School of Law and a well known commentator on diversity issues, also spoke to Choate’s partners, associates and staff members about the challenges of successfully implementing diversity initiatives.  Carol Fishman Cohen, a leading expert in professional career re-entry, spoke to a cross-section of employees on the challenges and opportunities facing women seeking to re-launch their careers.  The firm hosts Diversity Dine-Arounds for partners and associates to discuss diversity issues in the workplace and the staff hosts a holiday-themed “Celebration of Diversity.”

We are keenly aware of the importance of making the firm a friendly, welcoming environment for all people.  Most recently, the firm’s efforts have been recognized by Multi-Cultural Law, which listed Choate among the top 100 law firms for diversity and the top 50 law firms for women and associates.  Our diversity initiative is, and will continue to be in coming years, one of the firm’s highest priorities.

our commitments to diversity intersects with our commitment to pro bono

Our commitment to diversity is intertwined, as it should be, with our commitment to public service.  Just as we appreciate the importance of our attorneys representing the richness of our community, so too should our pro bono program.  Accordingly, we collaborate with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School under the leadership of Professor Charles J. Ogletree, the Center for Women and Enterprise, the Women’s Bar Foundation and the Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project, among other organizations, to ensure that under-served populations have access to justice from some of the most capable and committed lawyers in the country.  Click here to read more about our commitment to pro bono.

Recent highlights of the intersection of diversity and the pro bono program include:

• Focusing our pro bono efforts on cutting off the “school to prison pipeline” by representing low-income students in educational law matters through the firm’s collaboration with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice and the Center for Law and Education.  The goal of this unique collaboration is to keep at-risk students with learning disabilities in school and out of the criminal justice system by ensuring that they receive the free, appropriate public education to which they are entitled under federal and state law – through both individual cases and more systemic responses.  Choate attorneys represent these students and their parents before school administrators, state agencies and in court.  This collaboration was formed in 2008 and launched later that year, and already the firm has undertaken the representation of 12 families in these matters.  Over twenty Choate lawyers have actively participated in this effort.
• Funding internships for first year Harvard Law School students of color to conduct nationwide research on the “School to Prison Pipeline” at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute under the leadership of Professor Charles J. Ogletree.
• Representing women and men from African countries, including the Sudan, Uganda and Liberia, in asylum matters before the Department of Homeland Security and the Boston Immigration Court.  Many of these asylees were brutally persecuted on account of their political activism or tribal affiliations, and with the assistance of Choate attorneys, seek lives of safety and dignity.
• Helping women entrepreneurs obtain formal certification as woman-owned businesses to gain access to public funding and corporate markets through our work with the Center for Women and Enterprise.