When Natalie Reid, an African American ninth-year associate at Debevoise & Plimpton, got a phone call from her firm’s presiding partner, Michael Blair, in early 2012, asking if she was interested in being the firm’s Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) fellow, she hesitated. How would she balance the program, a highly structured mentoring and training program that lasts throughout the entire year, with her demanding international litigation practice? Ultimately, a talk with Debevoise’s fellow from the previous year, counsel Richard Robinson Jr., helped her decide. “He told me if I couldn’t make time for this program, then I’m crazy,” says Reid.
While law firm diversity programs have been around for years, some of the marquee programs are looking to expand this year. Enrollment in the LCLD fellows program, which began in 2011, started with 125 that year, and increased to 135 in 2012. The program will likely increase to 145 this year, with 10 additional firms and companies joining as participants. The LCLD 1L Scholar program for first-year law students, also in its third year, has seen its participants increase threefold, from 46 in 2011 to 152 in 2012, and is also expected to grow. LCLD executive director Robert Grey Jr., a government relations partner at Hunton & Williams, says that the expansion was a result of an increased interest from law firms, saying simply: “We have more members this year than the year before.”
