Clark Hill Named Among Mansfield Rule Participants

Clark Hill is excited to announce that it has been named among more than 160 large law firms in the United State and Canada that are participating in the Mansfield Rule 5.0 Certification process launching July 15.

The goal of the Mansfield Rule is to boost the representation of historically underrepresented lawyers in law firm leadership. Now entering its fifth year, the Mansfield Rule has become the standard by which law firms track and measure that they have affirmatively considered at least 30 percent women, lawyers from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, lawyers with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ lawyers for top leadership roles, senior-level lateral hiring, promotions into the equity partnership, and participation in client pitch meetings.

Recent data shows that the Mansfield Rule is succeeding at its goal. The “early adopter” firms piloting the Mansfield Rule since its 2017 inception have increased the racial and ethnic diversity of their management committees by 30 times the rate of non-Mansfield Rulefirms. Similar to previous years, this iteration of the Mansfield Rule includes new challenges to continuously push the boundaries necessary to boost diversity in law firm leadership. New for Mansfield 5.0, firms are required to:

• Track their candidate pools in a disaggregated manner, prompting them to measure the impact of the Mansfield Rule by each underrepresented group. Firms must also include an option for Middle Eastern/North African identity, a demographic often overlooked by current self-identification options;
• Consider at least 30 percent underrepresented lawyers for nominations to Chambers USA to increase the external visibility of underrepresented lawyers with clients and in the marketplace more broadly; and
• Consider 30 percent underrepresented individuals when hiring and promoting C-level or other senior-level professional staff roles.

In addition, law firms pursuing Mansfield Certification Plus — which indicates that they have not only considered but achieved 30 percent representation of underrepresented lawyers in many of the Mansfield Rule’scategories — will be asked to heighten the transparency of their partner compensation criteria and processes by publishing and making them available to all lawyers in the firm. Natalia Marulanda, Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Rule Manager, noted, “Increasing accountability and transparency have always been major objectives of the MansfieldRule, and we’re excited to be working with firms to shed more light on partner compensation practices, the holy grail of inclusion and equity.”