To Firm Clients,
As we start the new year, we thought it was an appropriate time to share some exciting developments concerning the firm’s pro bono and diversity efforts. Teamwork, superior client service, firm citizenship, and community involvement have served as the firm’s core values since its founding in 1873. We believe that our dedication to pro bono and diversity in 2007—and our plans to continue these efforts in 2008—is consistent with these values.
Pro Bono
For more than 100 years, Morgan Lewis attorneys and staff have committed time and resources to serving the public good. In 2006, our lawyers contributed more than 80,000 hours to pro bono representations, at a value to our pro bono clients of tens of millions of dollars and equaling an average of more than 65 hours per lawyer. In 2007, the firm’s lawyers exceeded these very high standards. We are proud of the fact that these representations span all practice groups and offices; in both 2006 and 2007, more than 70% of the firm’s attorneys each contributed 20 or more hours to a pro bono matter.
Our pro bono practice serves a wide variety of worthy clients—both individuals and non-profit organizations. Recently, we have begun a massive effort to represent disabled veterans who are seeking benefits from the Veterans Administration. Because of a recent change in VA rules, private attorneys are for the first time allowed to represent veterans in this context. Nearly 50 of our lawyers are volunteering with the National Veterans Legal Services Program to serve those who serve our country. In addition, a dozen of our paralegals and library professionals have signed up for a records retrieval and copying project at NVLSP. We are thrilled that lawyers and non-lawyers in nearly all of our offices are pulling together to help these veterans.
As a complement to our veterans’ benefits practice, Morgan Lewis has represented a number of Iraqi nationals who served as interpreters for American forces as these individuals applied for special immigration status in the United States. In representing these courageous individuals, Morgan Lewis attorneys are expanding an already vigorous asylum and immigration practice. In 2006, the firm spent more than 8,000 hours on the representation of more than 60 individuals seeking asylum in the United States.
We are proud to have policies that support this innovative practice and strive to give each client, pro bono or otherwise, the very best legal representation in the world. We look forward to expanding our initiatives in 2008 and to working with so many of our clients who are beginning pro bono programs of their own.
Diversity
We applied the same level of intensity to our diversity efforts in 2007 as to our pro bono efforts, and will continue to do so in 2008. For decades, our goal has been to cultivate and sustain a welcoming environment where anyone with talent, energy, and desire can succeed. Diversity is not simply the generation of statistics; it is a characteristic that contributes to better problem solving and more creativity. We can better serve our clients and support each other if our organization is characterized by a rich diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and approaches to solving problems.
Recognizing that the firm’s success in this area is directly tied to our partners’ efforts, we selected the topic of diversity as the focal point of our annual partners meeting. We took this unique step to stress the significance of the issue as a business imperative for our firm. That business imperative takes many forms. We are fundamentally a talent business, meaning that we must call upon the professional and leadership skills of the entire Morgan Lewis community. We are a creative business, meaning that the services we provide to our clients will be better if we are able to look at problems from many different perspectives, and offer the most innovative and effective solutions. We are an enduring business, meaning that we have to change with the times and always focus on the best and most available pools of talented lawyers. Finally, we are a fair business, meaning that we want everyone who works with us to be assured that we maintain and support a fair and inclusive environment in which every person of every background is respected and has a chance to contribute.
Our goal for the meeting was not only to look at diversity from our own perspective, but also to include our clients’ views, as well as the opinions of those with expertise in the area. To this end, we invited Bill Proudman, founding partner of White Men as Full Diversity Partners, LLC, and Dr. Arin Reeves, President of The Athens Group, to speak. In addition to speaking to the group, Mr. Proudman facilitated a panel discussion among four firm clients. During this discussion, the panelists shared their personal diversity goals, as well as their expectations of Morgan Lewis. Dr. Reeves provided insight into the demographic and generational changes facing law firms in their efforts to recruit and retain excellent lawyers. She also laid the foundation for a series of breakout sessions in which our partners strategized on how we can better focus the firm’s diversity efforts. These sessions were highly successful and are serving to guide our next steps.
Accordingly, we have planned our second firmwide Attorneys of Color meeting to be held on April 4 and 5, 2008. This meeting, which will be attended by firm and practice group leadership, provides our attorneys of color an opportunity to network and to candidly discuss issues of importance to them. The results of our first meeting in 2006 guided our Diversity Committee in structuring Morgan Lewis’s diversity efforts and we expect a similar result from this event.
Best wishes.
Francis M. Milone
Chair