Ogletree Deakins, one of the largest labor and employment law firms representing management, is proud to announce that the firm has achieved Mansfield 5.0 Certification, administered by Diversity Lab. Ogletree Deakins is among more than 160 leading law firms that participated in the Mansfield 5.0 Certification process.
The Mansfield Rule is a rigorous, year-long certification program that aims to boost and sustain diversity in law firm leadership. It asks law firms to consider at least 30 percent historically underrepresented attorneys—including women, underrepresented races and/or ethnicities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and/or those with disabilities—when appointing to leadership roles, promoting to equity partnership, and more. The fifth iteration of the Mansfield Rule, Mansfield 5.0, launched in July 2021 and ended in July 2022.
As part of Ogletree Deakins’ participation in The Mansfield Rule program, the firm also created and published job descriptions and appointment/election policies for leadership roles, contributed to monthly knowledge sharing forums, and met routine check-in, data-collection, and reporting milestones.
“Fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion is not only a moral imperative, it is one of Ogletree Deakins’ core values and is essential to the success of our firm. For many years, we’ve been evaluating our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and deliberately focusing on improvement in this area,” said Matt Keen, Managing Shareholder of Ogletree Deakins. “The Mansfield initiative has provided a framework that helps us to be more intentional in ensuring that we have a diverse pool of qualified candidates when making new leadership decisions. We are committed to making meaningful change to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion remains a cornerstone of our firm.”
Ogletree Deakins has recommitted to participate in the Mansfield 6.0 Certification process, which will run through summer of 2023.
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