ML Women Harnesses the Strength of Women Lawyers, Clients, and Alumnae

In October 2015, Firm Chair Jami McKeon proudly announced the launch of ML Women, a diversity initiative focused on promoting and leveraging the strength of Morgan Lewis’s women lawyers, creating opportunities for women inside and outside the firm to come together around a shared industry, practice, or community service.

“Many firms talk a lot about diversity,” said Jami McKeon, “but at Morgan Lewis, we are lucky to already have a strong group of outstanding women lawyers in every geography and practice group. ML Women reflects our commitment to diversity and—like everything else we do at Morgan Lewis—the focus of this new program is on our clients.”

Whether it is hosting a specialized roundtable for women featuring speakers from Morgan Lewis, clients, and external experts, or leveraging its vast network of successful women alumnae to discuss topics specific to women, leadership, and the power of women consumers, ML Women seeks to support women leaders in business and industry.

“ML Women is a business imperative for all of us—men and women,” said Steve Wall, Morgan Lewis’s Managing Partner of Practice. “It helps us hear perspectives that our clients are hearing every day with the diversity of their own organizations. It doesn’t matter if you look at diversity from the perspective of a man or a woman, ML Women is very important.”

ML Women is part of a larger effort to embed diversity and inclusion principles into Morgan Lewis’s approach to employees and clients. Beyond working with women lawyers, women clients, and women business partners, ML Women is dedicated to serving the community to empower and promote the success of women. One recent effort was ML Women’s partnership with Let Girls Learn, an organization dedicated to addressing the range of challenges that prevent adolescent girls from attending and completing school, at home and abroad.

Jami McKeon addressed the culture in which ML Women has been created: “I venture to say that there is not one of us who doesn’t work with clients where women are in positions of increasing authority in the legal department and in the business, and men and women at these clients. . . are looking to partner with us to see that our makeup and our commitment to diversity and the success of women mirrors their own. It’s good for us, it’s good for our clients, and it’s good for society.”