General Counsel, managing partners and community stakeholders of the Diversity Initiative at the 2009 Annual Meeting of Signatories hosted by Duke Energy Corporation.
Since its inception in 2004, the MCB Charlotte-Mecklenburg General Counsel and Managing Partners' Diversity Initiative (Diversity Initiative) has focused on increasing diversity within local law firms and legal departments. The program asks legal organizations to individually and collectively commit to practices that will benefit the demographic make-up of our local legal community.
Participating firms and legal departments in the program, also known as signatories, have voluntarily signed the MCB Call to Action (pdf) - a public pledge to create a more diverse community of lawyers. In signing this Call to Action signatories commit to the following overarching goals:
- Signatories will recruit, hire, train and retain minority law students and/or attorneys who meet their requisite hiring and/or partnership admission criteria, and invite such individuals to join the organizations' leadership.
- Signatories will establish an effective mentoring program to promote retention of all attorneys and to facilitate promotion of successful law firm careers.
- Signatories will work to create and/or support a mechanism as part of its management structure, whose focus shall be to promote, foster, and enhance diversity efforts.
- The leadership of each signatory law department of law firm and all of their employed attorneys should be encouraged to participate in sensitivity and diversity training programs.
- Each signatory should create marketing and/or recruiting pieces highlighting a concern for and commitment to diversity.
Signatories to the MCB Charlotte-Mecklenburg General Counsel and Managing Partners' Diversity Initiative
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP
Charlotte City Attorney's Office
Hamilton Stephens Steele & Martin PLLC
Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP
Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson PA
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice