From our founding in 1972, Fenwick has been committed to promoting diversity and inclusion both within our firm and throughout the legal profession.

For almost four decades, the firm has actively promoted an open and inclusive work environment and committed significant resources towards improving our diversity efforts across all levels.

Fenwick has implemented a number of initiatives to support and encourage our diversity and inclusion efforts.

Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

• Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Initiative: Partners agree to complete specific action items from a list of priority tasks developed by the firm's Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Partners select from the menu of specified activities (or propose one of their own), and commit to undertake these actions during the year.

• Diversity and Inclusion Committee: A 17-person Diversity and Inclusion Committee establishes short-term and long-term diversity goals, sets specific courses of action, and closely monitors efforts on those items. The Committee also gathers feedback from partners, associates and staff on the firm's diversity efforts and what can be done to improve recruiting and retention of diverse attorneys and staff.

• Women's Leadership Initiative: The firm offers an ongoing series of events focused on building leadership, management and business development skills of our women attorneys while providing a supportive network as they find their paths to leadership.

• Affinity Groups: The firm created informal attorney groups centered on common interests and backgrounds to create a more comfortable and inclusive environment.

• Attorney Recruiting Initiative: The firm has a Manager of Attorney Recruiting and Diversity and actively recruits diverse attorneys through numerous channels, including on-campus initiatives, minority bar associations and job fairs.

• California Minority Counsel Program: Although Fenwick attorneys have been active in CMCP for many years, in recent years we began recruiting clients to participate in CMCP's annual conference, thereby increasing CMCP's membership and helping advance CMCP's mission of increasing diversity in California's corporate, government and private law firm ranks.

• Public Interest Diversity Fellowship: The firm offers a split summer opportunity for 2L fellowship students. The fellow(s) spend the first seven weeks at Fenwick as a summer associate and the following three weeks at one of several Bay Area public interest organizations focused on the delivery of legal services to communities of color.

• Pride Law Fund: Since 2007, the firm has made financial commitments to Pride Law Fund (PLF), one of the oldest LGBT legal advocacy and education groups in the United States. This ongoing financial commitment is the largest PLF has received since its inception over 20 years ago.

This commitment to diversity extends to Fenwick's involvement with bar associations, pro bono work and law schools. Many Fenwick attorneys are involved with associations such as the Hispanic National Bar Association, La Raza Lawyers of California, Asian American Bar Association, Asian Law Caucus, Queen's Bench and Lambda Legal.

Through pro bono collaborations, we have provided legal services for many minority groups and have established outreach programs that support law student groups and assist diverse students in entering law firm life.

Recognition for our Diversity and Inclusion Efforts

Consistently ranked as one of the most diverse law firms in the United States, Fenwick has received the following recent recognition:

• Ranked #1 by MultiCultural Law Magazine in the publication's 2011 "Top 100 Law Firms for Diversity" survey. Also ranked #1 in the "Top 25 Law Firms for Asian-Americans" survey and #4 in the "Top 50 Law Firms for Associates" survey

• Ranked by Minority Law Journal as one of the top three and by American Lawyer as one of the top seven most diverse law firms in the United States

• Recently received 100% score (A+ rating) on The Human Rights Campaign Foundation's 2010 Corporate Equality Index for Fenwick's pro-LGBT policies and working environment

• Our unique diversity efforts were featured -in a recent front-page article in The Recorder

Promoting Leadership through Diversity

The firm actively promotes and supports diverse partners in leadership roles. The diversity of our executive management committees increased steadily over the last five years as represented by the following:

• Women comprise over 30% of all executive management committees.

• Diverse attorneys comprise 18% of all executive management committees.

• Women represent almost 33% of all attorneys: 44% of non-partner attorneys and 15% of partners.

• Racial minorities represent 27% of all attorneys: 36% of non-partner attorneys and 10% of partners.

• A woman serves as our firm-wide Managing Partner.

Click here to view our Diversity and Inclusion Newsletter.