Editor's Corner

As contributing writer Joseph Rosenbloom tells us in "Man with a Plan," Henry Adorno wasn't thinking much about diversity when, after toiling in the prosecutorial trenches, he opened his own firm with two partners back in 1986. Adorno was concerned simply with survival. Spending time worrying about the skin color of the lawyers he worked with was a luxury he didn't have time for. But somewhere along the way, Adorno, a Cuban American, had a eureka moment. He realized that change was afoot in corporate America, and that making something--that is to say, building something--out of his minority heritage wasn't just a matter of tapping into political correctness. It was good for business.

Since then, Adorno has devoted himself to turning his firm, Adorno & Yoss, into the country's largest minority-owned firm--one that competes head-to-head with larger, more homogeneous firms for corporate clients who increasingly prize diversity when handing out contracts. Has Adorno struck on a winning long-term strategy?

Speaking of change, this year's Diversity Scorecard takes a new look at our core subject. As we promised last year, we've retooled our methodology to come up with a truer gauge of law firm diversity. The major change is that we're now giving extra credit to firms for their percentage of minority partners. We knew that following this path would reshuffle our annual rankings, but we were surprised at how much shuffling occurred.

A final note on change: Last year we featured a story about a onetime hot legal prospect who spurned a near-certain job clerking for an appeals court judge--and the fast track, perhaps, to a judgeship or big-firm partnership--because he was on a different path ["No Thanks, Your Honor," Summer 2008]. Guess Barack Obama made the right call.

Ed Shanahan
ed.shanahan@incisivemedia.com