Corporate Roundtable Working Group

In 2021, the PLDIC formed the Corporate Roundtable Working Group comprised of ten of our in-house legal department members. The purpose of this working group is to have in house counsel and legal professionals from our member organizations work collaboratively to develop best practices, tools, and programs to source diverse outside counsel and enhance the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of our law firm members, and in turn, their own legal departments.

The group has been meeting on a bi-monthly basis to work on 4 key initiatives:

  • Collecting Diversity Metrics from Outside Counsel
  • Relationship Building Programs between Diverse Outside Counsel and In-House Clients
  • Improving the Visibility of Diverse Lawyers at Small and Mid-sized Firms
  • Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement of Diverse In-House Attorneys

The founding members of the working group have created a Member Handbook, accessible on our members only page, providing guidance to our in-house legal department members about Collecting Diversity Metrics from Outside Counsel and the Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement of Diverse In-House Attorneys.

In 2023, the Corporate Roundtable Working Group will focus on Relationship Building Programs between Diverse Outside Counsel and In-House Clients and Improving the Visibility of Diverse Lawyers at Small and Mid-sized Firms.

The Relationship Building project will research and develop programs that build relationships between diverse outside counsel and in house attorneys in order to encourage retention and advancement at our law firms. In particular, this project will answer the question of what to DO with the data corporations collect from outside legal counsel.

The Visibility Project developed a program that will be rolled out in three phases: Phase I: identify program participants; Phase II: develop opportunities for diverse attorneys; Phase III: implementation of opportunities. To learn more about this approach, please review the guidance.

The PLDIC is actively seeking members to participate in the next iteration of this working group. If your organization would like to join the Corporate Roundtable Working Group, please contact Ena. Working group meetings will begin in late January 2023.