For years, compelling conversations about the importance of workplace diversity have been a hot topic—especially in the legal sector. Long known for being an industry dominated by white males, law firms and their counterparts have been urged to reconstitute organizational cultures to equipoise multicultural, diverse work environments within an increasingly global framework.  Calls to address the lack of diversity in a sector that is supposed to represent everyone are echoed throughout boardrooms and executive meetings.

As firms and companies focus on weathering an ongoing pandemic, diversity efforts should not be set aside as a problem for another day. If diversity takes a back seat during every economic downturn as it has in the past, progress will never be made. Diversity must stay front of mind now more than ever as diverse and female attorneys are more likely to struggle, receive less work, or be overlooked. Not everyone stands on equal footing, and the pandemic and recession have highlighted these differences. Business-as-usual no longer suffices—it will take extra and special care to simply maintain the status quo.