The Mansfield Rule measures whether law firms have affirmatively considered women and attorneys of color for at least 30 percent of leadership and governance roles, equity partner promotions, and senior lateral positions. The Mansfield Rule was one of the winning ideas from the 2016 Women in Law Hackathon hosted by Diversity Lab in collaboration with Bloomberg Law and Stanford Law School.
The goal of the Mansfield Rule is to boost the representation of diverse lawyers in law firm leadership by broadening the pool of candidates considered for these opportunities. To achieve the Mansfield Rule objectives, participating law firms had to first establish a baseline metric by which they could assess and analyze their talent pipelines.
The Mansfield Rule has resulted in significant progress among the participating law firms:
- 100 percent of the 41 firms are now tracking their pool of candidates for leadership and governance roles, up from 30 percent of participating firms prior to the pilot
- For senior associate lateral hiring, 100 percent are tracking their pipelines, up from 28 percent
- For partner lateral hiring, 100 percent are tracking their pipelines, up from 20 percent
- For equity partner promotions, 100 percent are tracking their pipelines, up from 60 percent
"We are extremely pleased to receive Mansfield Plus Certification. Over the past year, the Mansfield Rule has further sharpened our focus on the promotion and recruitment of women and diverse partners and their appointment to leadership positions. The results from the first year demonstrate how much can be achieved when law firms work together to move the needle on diversity,” said Sandy Thomas, global managing partner of Reed Smith.
Following the successful pilot, Diversity Lab has also announced that it has launched the 2.0 iteration of the Mansfield Rule, which runs from July 2018 to July 2019, with 65 law firms. New for this version, Mansfield 2.0 will include LGBTQ+ lawyers, as well as women and attorneys of color, as part of the diverse candidate pool. Also new, in addition to leadership role appointments and lateral hiring, Mansfield 2.0 will also measure consideration for roles in client pitch meetings, and will ask participating law firms to make appointment and election processes transparent to all lawyers in their firms. For the Mansfield 2.0 pilot, Diversity Lab will continue to measure and report data on participating firms’ progress.
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