DEIB is not a “one-size-fits-all” practice, which is why so many companies implement it incorrectly. This article describes why your DEIB initiatives are lacking and how DEIB could benefit your law firm’s profits and office engagement.
Law firms, like most businesses, want to follow the law and dislike being sued for being exclusionary. Great! So, how can a law firm implement DEIB without facing ridicule or lawsuits? By determining whether acknowledging DEIB supports the goals and values of the law firm.
DEI, or DEIB, is an acronym that stands for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. DEIB initiatives are tools of advocacy. People are different; we behave, create, and work differently. People are often ridiculed for their differences, or their “otherness” is blatantly ignored. If you can file a lawsuit to show how much someone’s ridicule has harmed you, you might be awarded a judgment or legal remedy to prevent these actions from continuing or impacting others.
DEIB was created to encourage community. How would this apply to your business? If people with diverse backgrounds have fair and equitable conditions and opportunities and are included in the programming and planning of an organization, this should foster belonging. And how is this completed?
Many law firms and businesses create employee resource groups or diversity councils and networks that encourage people with similar experiences to find community. To acknowledge and possibly encourage DEIB, we must understand a few misconceptions about DEIB.
One of the first DEIB laws in the United States was signed in 1948. President Truman signed an executive order that recommended ways to make the military more inclusive and penalize segregation based on race, color, religion, and national origin. This executive order impacted Black Americans in the military, who were frequently discriminated against because they were the minority in the military despite decades of military involvement and support. This executive order was issued two years following World War II when Japanese Americans were isolated and penalized out of fear of spying and disloyalty during the war.
Numerous DEIB initiatives and laws were enacted to acknowledge the differences of others and challenge how people were being treated, including the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and the fight for women’s pay equity.
Common sense is not common. We know people are judged on their looks, but common sense would allow a person to change their hair and still be employable. In 2021, the CROWN Act was passed in the House of Representatives, providing that people cannot be discriminated against because of their hair texture or hairstyle. The CROWN Act was implemented because people were discriminated against and not hired because their hair was in braids, locs, twists, coils, or Afros or was not displayed in straight, more traditionally and subjectively pleasing hairstyles.
The government had to step in and tell employers and government agencies to focus on a person’s qualifications for a role and look beyond their hairstyle. On a systematic level, judging someone’s looks meant that their “otherness” was seen as inferior.
DEIB policies do not mean that you are allowing unprepared, inferior, or undesirable candidates into your office. A common misconception is that DEIB only impacts people of color when DEIB initiatives impact women, pay and ableism equity, human rights, and ageism, to name a few.
In 2025, companies are being attacked or celebrated because of their performative DEIB initiatives. Emphasis on performative!
Examples of performative DEIB initiatives are making Juneteenth a floating holiday but failing to understand why the date matters to Black Americans, or hiring women to speak at events in March, which is Women’s History Month, but ignoring these qualified speakers for the rest of the year. Thanks for your brief attention, but the insincerity resonates.
Law firm management must determine whether DEIB benefits the office and mission of the business. Why? Because the junior lawyers and staff take their DEIB clues from the firm management. Leadership can say they appreciate DEIB and display little or no actions that acknowledge their appreciation of DEIB. And it shows.
Consider this: How would clients react if people of diverse backgrounds were in the office? How would the partners feel if you hired someone from a state law school instead of an Ivy League school? Who would be harmed if you hired an LGBTQ individual to lead a department and did not require them to train every leader in the firm about why their life is valuable?
Have you considered what a privilege it is to ignore DEIB? To be disinterested in pay equity? To be assumed competent, trustworthy, and correct because of your appearance? Consider what your law firm leadership could learn from DEIB.
And honestly, what are you afraid of? Will DEIB change the foundation of your firm? Good! DEIB policies are asking you to consider that you don’t know everything and your experience is not better than any other experience. Hiring someone with a diverse background will not harm you any more than installing a wheelchair ramp will make your legs stop functioning. DEIB is about acknowledging that people in your law firm need help getting attention (hello, equity!). They might be overlooked frequently and require additional opportunities to contribute (yep, that’s inclusion), or they need more than a mandatory weekend training to feel valuable (belonging).
When law firm leadership determines whether DEIB fits within the mission and goal of their law firm, they can then focus on finding people and companies that specialize in training leadership to embrace DEIB. It is not the responsibility of anyone in your office to teach and train others about DEIB.
If leadership fails to see the value of DEIB or is uninterested in understanding it, it is good that you know now. Let’s save a few billable hours by removing these performative acts from the law firm’s agenda.
DEIB could enhance your law firm in innumerable ways. Lawyers prefer to work with facts rather than imagery, so let me share a story.
I worked in a mid-sized Big Law firm for almost five years and loved it. I enjoyed billing my time, training the staff, and working in my corner office with a window overlooking the hallway. I was also the youngest person in the office, the second Black woman in the Cincinnati office, and the only Black woman in a legal adjacent role. But I worked with a lot of exceptional women who showed me how to juggle it all. I worked with other young lawyers who encouraged me. I worked with older staff members who weren’t threatened by my youth and welcomed the spontaneity of my ideas. I was accepted because the office’s culture encouraged innovation, mentorship, inclusion, and belonging.
Partners and associates who I worked with would often say, “We need another Kyla.” Not to replace me, but they were interested in replicating the results I created. “Great, let’s do it,” I said. I was promptly asked to establish, hire, develop, and manage a team of paralegals who supported lawyers in five of our seven offices, and I sprinted toward the opportunity.
The diversity of my education, training, thought processes, energy, and hairstyles was valuable. I was never told that I was a DEIB hire, nor were any fears expressed to me that being a young, Black woman meant I would fill the office with other people who could not handle the tasks and work. My billable hours and ambition would carry me as far as I wanted to go.
The law firm did not lose clients because a 30-year-old wrote the standard operating procedures for this new department. When the 2020 pandemic happened, I moved fast to ensure we kept functioning at the same level of productivity and trained the team to use their new at-home printers and laptops. That’s odd to write, but before 2020, paralegals didn’t have laptops and only worked on desktop computers while in the office.
The diversity of my thoughts, ideas, processes, and actions kept the department innovative and supported the law firm’s goals. Nothing was lost because someone with a diverse background (me!) was given a unique opportunity, included in the department’s goals, and felt like she belonged. So, I challenge you to consider how your law firm could expand with DEIB. Your law firm will continue to be impacted by DEIB, whether you react or respond to trending political correctness.
If your law firm does not understand the value of DEIB and decides not to follow it, will that impact the office immediately? In five years? When law firms make decisions based on what is trending, they cannot be surprised when the vague, superficial DEIB initiatives are not impactful.
In January 2025, Target shareholders brought a lawsuit against the company for removing its DEIB policies and allegedly downplaying the impact of eliminating such policies. Target began to defend its decision, then issued a public apology, and is now attempting to restore its public reputation of accepting diversity and inclusion. The flip-flopping tells me that the company’s actions do not align with the company’s leadership.
Many of Target’s DEIB initiatives were enhanced and expanded following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 when other organizations were putting black squares on their social media timelines and finding ways to show that they were not like “them.”
We should not be surprised that these initiatives are being removed because many were short-term and were created in reaction to the rioting and the protests in the summer of 2020. It appears that Target’s foundation and beliefs did not change as quickly as its policies, and this shareholder lawsuit is an excellent example of cultural misalignment.
As law firm owners and business owners, you are responsible for understanding your organization’s values, even if one of those values is remaining profitable.
If your law firm has substantial governmental contracts or entanglements, you may have less control over what DEIB looks like in your office. However, the responsibility remains on the law firm to understand what is acceptable in the office and that people do what they see, not what you tell them to do. Political correctness will sway, and your law firm’s values should be grounded.
Law firm leadership must determine whether they want genuine or performative DEIB policies. Your office may have to rename the DEIB department. But if the goal of your law firm is to acknowledge diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, you will find a way to celebrate those differences. You will be a long-term winner by understanding DEIB.
And you will find a way to accept that your policies will differ from those of the law firm next door and the big box store down the street. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are subjective, but the goal is the same: inclusion and acceptance. Are you ready to find out what you believe in?
The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and are not official policy positions of the American Bar Association.
