Goodwin today announced its enrollment in Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Rule 5.0 certification process launching July 15, 2021, marking the firm’s fifth consecutive year participating in the program.
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 thirty 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.
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, Diversity Lab expanded the criteria to ensure that firms:
- Track their candidate pools in a disaggregated manner, prompting them to measure the impact of the Mansfield Rule by each underrepresented group;
- Include an option for Middle Eastern/North African identity, a demographic often overlooked by current self-identification options;
- Consider at least 30% 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% underrepresented individuals when hiring and promoting C-level or other senior-level professional staff roles.
Goodwin will also again be pursuing Mansfield Certification Plus — which, if achieved, indicates that a firm has not only considered, but achieved thirty percent representation of underrepresented lawyers in many of the Mansfield Rule’s categories.
Diversity Lab is an incubator for innovative ideas and solutions that boost diversity and inclusion in law. Experimental ideas like the Mansfield Rule are created through hackathons and piloted in collaboration with more than 100 top law firms and legal departments across the country.
Goodwin partners with Diversity Lab on several diversity and inclusion initiatives. The firm participates in Diversity Lab’s OnRamp Fellowship program, which provides a platform for women lawyers to re-enter the legal profession after stepping away from the practice of law for a period of time. Goodwin also placed among the top ten highest scoring firms in Diversity Lab’s Inclusion Blueprint Survey, which measures gender diversity in law firm leadership as well as the work experiences of women at the practice group level, with a particular focus on intellectual property.
Learn more about Goodwin’s Diversity, Equity + Inclusion efforts.