Above the Law reports that women in the Jones Day Business and Tort Litigation group have been “encouraged” to tell management if they were pregnant or planning on becoming pregnant within the next year.

ATL executive editor Elie Mystal writes:

We’re told that partner Stephen Sozio, who is co-leader of the firm’s health care practice and chair of the firm’s litigation department in Cleveland, added that he understood if women who were in their first trimester were uncomfortable talking to him. He encouraged those women to contact his administrative assistant and tell her about their plans.

The women were told that the information would help the group plan its budget.

Read the Above the Law article.

The Chicago Tribune tells the story of a former general counsel who had been unemployed and job hunting for three years when he came across a position that seemed promising, but for this part of the ad: “3 to 7 years (no more than 7 years) of relevant legal experience,” it said.

The story of Dale Kleber, who was 58 at the time, illustrates a bigger story of the critical question about whether job applicants can pursue lawsuits at all in such cases, explains reporter Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz.

“The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits discrimination against people over 40, but there is dispute about whether Congress intended for the law to protect external job applicants, not just current or former employees, against policies that appear to be neutral but have a disproportionate adverse effect on older people,” she writes.

Kleber’s experience includes a stint as general counsel at Dean Foods and, most recently, as CEO of a dairy products trade group.

Read the Chicago Tribune article.

Image by Patrick

USA Today reports that a class-action lawsuit was filed Monday against IBM on behalf of three former employees alleging age discrimination.

Reporter Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy explains: “The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiffs are among thousands of IBM employees to be laid off recently as the result of a shift in IBM’s focus to recruit millennials ‘in order to make the face of IBM younger, while at the same time pushing out older employees.'”

“IBM has discriminated, and continues to discriminate, against its older workers, both by laying them off disproportionately to younger workers and by not hiring them for open positions,” the lawsuit alleges.

The three name plaintiffs are 55, 59 and 67, and have worked for IBM for periods ranging from 15 to 34 years.

Read the USA Today article.

A former partner at Manatt has filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, on behalf of herself and those similarly situated alleging gender discrimination and retaliation at the Biglaw firm, reports Above the Law.

Rebecca Torrey’s filing details allegations of a “boys’ club” an environment that weighs “heavily in the favor of male partners.”

Torrey also alleges the compensation structure for partners is dictated by a group hand-selected by outgoing firm managing partner, William Quicksilver, and who rarely challenge his recommendations.

Read the Above the Law article.

Image by Ben Sutherland

JPMorgan Chase has reached a settlement with financial advisers who say they were treated poorly because they’re black, reports Bloomberg News via the Chicago Tribune.

Reporter Max Abelson explains: “Six current and former employees at the largest U.S. bank filed what they asked to be a class action, alleging discrimination that’s ‘uniform and national in scope.’ Instead of fighting it in court, the bank agreed to pay $19.5 million to the members of the class, according to Friday filings. It will also put $4.5 million into a fund that will back recruitment, bias training, a review of branch assignments and a coaching program for black advisers.”

In the settlement, the bank denied any “wrongdoing of any kind whatsoever.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

The national defense firm of Foley & Mansfield announce that the firm has signed on to Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Rule 2.0, an initiative designed to help law firms diversify candidate pools for significant leadership positions. It measures whether law firms have affirmatively considered women, LGBTQ+, and minority lawyers – at least 30% of the candidate pool – for promotions, senior level hiring, and significant leadership roles in the firm.

In a release, the firm said Foley & Mansfield’s adoption of the Mansfield Rule is an integral part of the firm’s heightened focus on stimulating diversity and inclusion in its ranks. Evidence of the firm’s recent progress in this arena include being named a 2018 Top Firm for Diversity in the American Lawyer Diversity Scorecard, and earning the ranking of #11 on the National Law Journal 2018 Women’s Scorecard, the firm said.

“We are proud to be a part of the Mansfield Rule 2.0 initiative. It’s not just lip service at F&M. The Mansfield Rule 2.0 provides a concrete framework that emphasizes our commitment to increasing diversity and inclusion,” said Joseph Rejano, co-chair of the firm’s nationwide Diversity Committee and a partner in the firm’s Chicago office.

The rule, named after Arabella Mansfield, the first woman admitted to the practice of law in the United States, 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.

Click here for more information on Diversity Lab.

According to a report released by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, employers are at an increased risk of age-discrimination litigation due to changing workforce demographics, according to a Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone post.

“The State of Age Discrimination and Older Workers in the U.S. 50 Years After the Age Discrimination in Employment Act” highlights a number of important considerations for employers with regard to older workers.

“The report notes that older workers, specifically those in the 65+ category, are expected to remain in the workforce for longer, at greater numbers, and are the segment of the workforce expected to grow the fastest through 2024,” the post reports. “As a result of the increased presence of older workers in the workforce, the EEOC report warns against employment discrimination based on age, representing that ‘[u]nfounded assumptions about age and ability continue to drive age discrimination in the workplace.'”

Read the article.

Employers large and small are committed to taking action to pursue expanded diversity and inclusion in their workforces through the use of a contract provision known as an “inclusion rider,” points out Don Lawless in a post in Barnes & Thornburg’s Hot Topics in Employment Law blog.

“Consideration of gender, race, or national origin in pursuit of diversity is a legal two-way street,” he warns. “If goals are applied like quotas, it creates the possibility of reverse discrimination claims by qualified and interested job candidates who are not considered because they will not help meet the established metrics.”

The article states that sophisticated employers have used established goals as a tool toward implementing equal employment opportunity objectives, steering clear of applying goals like quotas.

Read the article.

Bloomberg Big Law Business is convening leaders of corporate legal departments and law firms to address the diversity and inclusion challenge at a unique invitation-only event – the 4th Big Law Business Diversity Symposium.

The event will take place 8-10 a.m. Wednesday, May 10, 2017, at Bloomberg Government, 1101 K St NW, Suite 500, in Washington, DC 20005.

Request your invitation today to attend sessions such as:

Leading the Profession: Success Stories
Corporate legal departments see the most successful relationships when their goals and their law firm’s priorities are aligned. Hear how peers are approaching this effort and measuring success.

Inspiring Accountability: A Workshop
Big Law Business will facilitate a workshop on how to have the tough conversations on accountability for diversity and inclusion measures. Explore solutions to inspire leaders to create the incentives, models, and structures to increase diversity and stronger inclusion of ideas and skills in the profession.

Symposium Wrap-Up
Accountability measures that resonate: how the workshop results match back to traditional measurements of progress in the diversity of the legal profession.

The event is sponsored by Major, Lindsey & Africa and Quarles & Brady.

Request an invitation.

Legal departments aren’t just asking their outside law firms to field diverse groups of attorneys — they’re asking those firms to put attorneys in leadership positions, and they’re asking for data to back it up, reports Bloomberg Law.

Facebook bow requires outside counsel working on its projects to have at least 33 percent women and ethnic minorities. In addition, the firms must show they are actively creating “clear and measurable leadership opportunities for women and minorities” in the company’s legal matters, The New York Times reported.

“Facebook’s new policy comes on the heels of HP’s announcement in February that it would start withholding fees from law firms that don’t meet diversity requirements,” writes Stephanie Russell-Kraft.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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The general counsel of HP has informed its outside law firms that the company may withhold up to 10 percent of invoiced fees for failure to meet its diversity standards, reports the ABA Journal.

HP Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel Kim M. Rivera put law firms on notice of her “diversity holdback” mandate in a Feb. 8 letter.

The Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss writes, “HP says its definition of a diverse lawyer ‘is limited to race/ethnicity, gender, LGBT status, and disability status.’ A lawyer who is both a woman and who is racially/ethnically diverse and performs or manages at least 10 percent of the billable hours worked on HP matters satisfies the minimal diversity staffing requirement.”

Read the ABA Journal article.

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Live Conference:
Tuesday, May 3, 2:30 p.m.,
New York, NY

Bloomberg BNA will present a live conference titled Big Law Business Diversity & Inclusion Conference: A Call to Action, the third in the series of Diversity & Inclusion events, where Big Law Business will begin to take the next steps toward driving results and holding our profession accountable for progress.

The event will be on Tuesday, May 3, 2016 in New York, NY, beginning at 2:30 p.m. EDT and ending with an hour-long reception at 5:30 p.m. It will be at  the Harold Pratt House at 58 East 68th Street. General Counsel News readers may attend at no charge. (Registration form)

General counsel and their legal teams play a unique and important role in the conversation regarding Diversity & Inclusion in the legal profession – as the buyside of legal services, they are well-positioned to drive and influence the quality of legal services they receive. They are also currently moving more legal work in-house and the department’s ability to ensure diversity of ideas and thought leadership within their own teams is critical.

During this exclusive event, Big Law Business will convene chief legal counsel and their corporate senior diversity officers as well as law firm managing partners to focus on actionable results, accountability, and drive movement forward toward diversity in the legal profession.

The event is an opportunity to explore the success Big Law practices are having meeting their own workforce diversification goals, plus:

• Interviews and presentations on best practice
• Methods law schools, law firms, and the judiciary can utilize to collaborate to feed the in-house pipeline
• Ideas to take back to legal departments for immediate and long-term action

The conference agenda is available online.

Register for the conference.