Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
This is SOoooooooooo fucking true. Someday you and I need to have a coffee and I need to get help strategizing about how to keep trying to eliminate the segregation in some of the institutions I deal with. You should have seen the look on one of my employment law partners faces when I told him I thought we all had to admit we are at least influenced by racism, even him and even me.
I debate constantly right now whether it is time to scream "Enough. Stop being Racists." because the incrementalism really hasn't worked at all, for example, over the last 20 years in Boston law firms. Or whether that is just going to shut down anyone from listening. I've been doing more of the "Enough." lately than I used to.
I have been lucky enough to have hired and worked with a very diverse group of associates over the years. I have seen the barriers faced by those of them of color or who are women. It really pisses me off every day.
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My new tack is to show them impressive diverse people who are making decisions about who is getting their business. I'm not sure anyone listens to the messages they say about how diverse teams benefit from different perspectives, how it's important to them, etc. But they sure as hell are struck dumb when the GC of a company they'd love to have as a client is Black or Asian.
I'm constantly telling my partners that they need to think about this like they do IT. The market is evolving on this. It doesn't matter what you believe or how you like to work. If you don't change you will be left behind. Hell, they're losing out on business
right now and they don't even know it and when they do, they don't know why.
The problem I run into most at a firm my size are the partners who are at the tail end of their career, who have their relationships, who aren't interested in expanding relationships, and who do their work and go home. Those are the people who will bring a firm down. And management of firms with those people are terrified of pushing them too far.
TM
