A few tweaks were required when the legal profession, anxious to improve diversity within its ranks, borrowed from the National Football League’s playbook and adopted the “Rooney Rule,” which requires teams to interview minority candidates for all head coach openings.
At Chicago-based law firm Seyfarth Shaw, for example, executives do their hiring mindful of the “Rooney Presumption,” according to partner Laura Maechtlen, who spoke from San Francisco and is national vice chair of the labor and employment department and co-chair of the firm’s diversity and inclusion action team.
