Career & Practice Guide: Diversity & Inclusion

From microaggressions to the wage gap, The Memo empowers women of color with actionable advice on challenges and offers a clear path to success. Most business books provide a one-size-fits-all approach to career advice that overlooks the unique barriers that women of color face. In The Memo, Minda Harts offers a much-needed career guide tailored specifically for women of color. Drawing on knowledge gained from her past career as a fundraising consultant to top colleges across the country, Harts now brings her powerhouse entrepreneurial experience as CEO of The Memo to the page. With wit and candor, she acknowledges "ugly truths" that keep women of color from having a seat at the table in corporate America. Providing straight talk on how to navigate networking, office politics, and money, while showing how to make real change to the system, The Memo offers support and long-overdue advice on how women of color can succeed in their careers.

Expressions of support for diversity are nearly ubiquitous among contemporary law firms and corporations. Organizations back these rhetorical commitments with dedicated diversity staff and various diversity and inclusion initiatives. Yet, the goal of proportionate representation for people of color and women remains unrealized. Members of historically underrepresented groups remain seriously disadvantaged in professional training and work environments that white, upper-class men continue to dominate. While many professional labor markets manifest patterns of demographic inequality, these patterns are particularly pronounced in the law and elite segments of many professions. Diversity in Practice analyzes the disconnect between expressed commitments to diversity and practical achievements, revealing the often obscure systemic causes that drive persistent professional inequalities. These original contributions build on existing literature and forge new paths in explaining enduring patterns of stratification in professional careers. These more realistic assessments provide opportunities to move beyond mere rhetoric to something approaching diversity in practice.

This book is the first formal, empirical investigation into the law faculty experience using a distinctly intersectional lens, examining both the personal and professional lives of law faculty members. Comparing the professional and personal experiences of women of color professors with white women, white men, and men of color faculty from assistant professor through dean emeritus, Unequal Profession explores how the race and gender of individual legal academics affects not only their individual and collective experience, but also legal education as a whole. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical data, Meera E. Deo reveals how race and gender intersect to create profound implications for women of color law faculty members, presenting unique challenges as well as opportunities to improve educational and professional outcomes in legal education. Deo shares the powerful stories of law faculty who find themselves confronting intersectional discrimination and implicit bias in the form of silencing, mansplaining, and the presumption of incompetence, to name a few. Through hiring, teaching, colleague interaction, and tenure and promotion, Deo brings the experiences of diverse faculty to life and proposes a number of mechanisms to increase diversity within legal academia and to improve the experience of all faculty members.

Diversity Realized Putting the Walk with the Talk for Diversity in the Legal Profession is a call to action, from an educator and a member of the bar. Our profession has been striving to attain diversity among its ranks because we understand the benefits of diversity for our clients and ourselves, but, as Redfield shows, the bar has not yet realized diversity. "Professor Redfield illustrates in this book how underrepresented minority students are underperforming from first grade through high school and college, not because they are not capable of doing better, but because of the constraints of poverty and low expectations. As the pages of Diversity Realized reveal, when educators expect little of children, they tend to meet those low expectations and don't push themselves any further. For legal professionals seeking to diversify the bar, our task becomes clear as we read Diversity Realized: we need to provide role models, mentoring and other forms of involvement to encourage underrepresented minority students to break free from the constraints of their environment to rise and meet our expectations for them-to help change the landscape of the legal profession. Redfield does more than sound the alarm alerting our profession that our current efforts toward realizing diversity are inadequate, she shows us how to change our approach, based on the success of programs in our sister professions. Redfield spotlights those programs that have worked for the U.S. Army, for the medical profession, and those programs currently in place by law schools and members of the bar working to engage at risk students in the law through creative and non-traditional educational initiatives. Redfield shows us that to affect meaningful change in our profession we must be involved in the educational system in which underrepresented minorities are learning. We must re-focus the efforts of the bar and law schools into mentoring, and piloting unique educational programs designed to show these students all that they can achieve, and why they should want to achieve it. The kinds of programs Redfield advocates will ensure that tokenism is once and for all a thing of the past. This book should be read by everybody in the legal profession who understands that diversity in the profession is being demanded by clients who want quality representation. As Redfield artfully explains, we must change the way our young people are educated from the bottom up, so that we can realize a truly diverse profession." From the Foreword, Robert J. Grey, Jr., Past President, 2004-2005, American Bar Association. About the author: Sarah Redfield is a member of the Maine bar. She is currently Professor of Law at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH, An expert in education law, Professor Redfield is involved with a variety of diversity activities including serving as a Member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity (ACD) and chair of its Education Committee; a Member of the State Bar of California's Council on Access and Fairness and member of its Early Pipeline and US News & World Report subcommittees; an organizer of the Wingspread P20 Consortium; Chair of the Education Law Conference; a member of CLEO's Board of Directors; a member of the University of California at Irvine Saturday Academy of Law's Oversight and Curriculum Committees; and a Gubernatorial-Appointed Member of the Education Commission of the States and Elected Member of its Steering Committee.

This book had its beginnings in a simple question: How have some African-American attorneys, recently admitted to the bar, successfully navigated what research suggests is a very precarious pipeline to the legal profession? The response to this question entailed a journey that spanned some three years, over fifty informants, and a dozen or so researchers and scholars who study the intersections of education, race, and efforts to achieve social equity. The resulting work generalizes from the stories collected and constructs a substantive theory of success built around a phenomenon called "working recognition." This concept describes both the recognition experienced in various forms by our study's participants and the recognition they transformed into strategic activities aimed at overcoming academic, economic, and social obstacles encountered in their personal pipelines. We found that it was through such activity that they ultimately attained recognition as lawyers and entered the profession of law. As a way of situating the study within scholarship in higher and legal education, the book further presents essays from noted scholars who respond to the study's thematic findings comparing and contrasting them to related research and practices. Finally, we consider the policy implications that derive from our extant project, particularly policies that relate to future pipeline interventions.

Monica Parker, an African American lawyer, Harvard graduate and renowned career coach, writes about the specific issues facing female attorneys of color, providing solid advice on finding career satisfaction and success. What it Takes provides a wealth of practical advice for achieving greatness at a large firm. mid-sized firm or boutique, government or in-house firm.

This book is a unique, inspirational collection of letters from 44 experienced, highly accomplished women attorneys of color to the next generation outlining various roadmaps for success in the legal profession as a minority woman attorney. The book is organized by practice setting, and at the end of each chapter are tips for success from the authors featured in that chapter. The essays end with a response from a sister/daughter from the next generation.

This inspiring book contains letters of encouragement and advice from lawyers with disabilities to law students and new lawyers with disabilities. The writers share their perspectives on work and disability, based on their own experiences of success and setbacks.

Out and About: The LGBT Experience In the Legal Profession is intended to address the experiences of LGBT attorneys, academics, and jurists in the legal profession. Through their own words, our authors help educate and promote justice in and through the legal profession for the LGBT community in all its diversity. This book also celebrates LGBT members of the bar by recognizing this diverse group, their contributions, and their struggles. Being an individual, doing your own thing no matter what everyone else is doing, is the heart of the essays that comprise this book. The writers share their experience of at once blending in and yet feeling different, vulnerable, and exposed. They speak of the ever-present potential to be treated differently simply because of who they are, giving these essays deeper meaning. Some of these authors endured secret pain, suffering in private, hiding personal lives from colleagues. Others barely soldiered through, endeavoring just to make the lives of their clients better. And some openly achieved great success, personally, professionally, or both. Each and every one merits attention. Each chapter of this book informs and inspires readers to broaden horizons, opening minds to the vast diversity of LGBT individuals. The book aims to improve the legal profession and the justice system itself by demonstrating the vast potential within all of us. There always have been people who "dance to the beat of a different drummer." The contributors to this collection of essays hope you dance to whatever music suits you!