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Ropes & Gray's commitment to diversity has long placed a particular
focus on attorneys of color. In 1985, the firm was a founding member
of the Boston Lawyers Group (then known as the Boston Law Firm Group).
BLG is a consortium of Boston-area law firms, governmental law departments
and in-house corporate counsel that collaborates on various programs
and initiatives calculated to further BLG's stated mission, which is
to support the efforts of its member organizations to recruit,
advance and retain attorneys of color. At the time of its founding,
BLG was the nation's first city-wide collaboration of this kind. Since
1985, BLG members — using BLG and its varied programs as a spring
board — have
achieved substantial increases in the number and percentage of attorneys
of color that they employ, and BLG itself has become a model for similar
consortiums formed in many cities around the country. Ropes & Gray
lawyers have been active not only in founding, but thereafter in carrying
out, BLG's vision of a
more
diverse
community.
Roscoe
Trimmier,
the firm's first African-American partner and head of the Litigation
Department, served as an original member of the BLG's executive
committee and was instrumental in drafting the charter adopted by the
BLG's original member firms. A majority partner at Ropes & Gray
chaired the inaugural committee of the BLG that addresses issues of
retention of minority lawyers. Today, Ropes & Gray lawyers serve
as members of BLG's Executive Committee, Hiring & Education Committee,
Diversity Best Practices Committee, and Associate Advisory Committee.
Also, Ropes & Gray
regularly participates in the BLG-sponsored job fairs that are conducted
in Boston
and Washington,
D.C. |
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Partners Roscoe
Trimmier and Hemmie
Chang currently serve, respectively, on BLG's Executive Committee and
Diversity Best Practices Committee. |
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Vani Suvarna (Boston College Law School '06), left, Chung Wei (Harvard Law School '06), center, and Yvonne Osirim (Harvard Law School '07), right, were also recruited to the firm through our BLG Job Fair, and they are all associates in our Boston office. |
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The firm is also an active participant
in the programs sponsored by the Partnership, a non-profit organization
whose mission, in part, is to attract and retain young professionals
of color in the Boston area. We often sponsor young lawyers
in the Partnership's fellowship program, a program designed to introduce
Fellows to the corporate, civic, arts and other aspects of Boston city
life.
Not only is Ropes & Gray a leader on issues related to attorneys of color,
but our attorneys of color hold significant positions within the firm as well.
The attorneys of color at Ropes & Gray include 23 partners and comprise 15%
of the lawyers in the firm (see Demographics);
they are spread across all our major practice areas and occupy a wide range
of seniority levels within those practice areas. Out of the leading 150 law firms nationwide, Vault has rated Ropes & Gray #18 in terms of diversity and #13 in diversity with respect to minorities. See Attorneys
of Color Bios.
Our attorneys of color lead practice groups and serve on a number of the cross-departmental
committees and groups that administer the firm on a day-to-day basis, including
the Associates Committee, the Hiring
Group, the Diversity Committee, the Associates
Development Committee, the Women's Forum and the Training
Advisory Committee.
The firm sponsors the Attorneys of Color group for social and professional
support of its attorneys of color. The AOC group conducts regular quarterly meetings
and leads special events oriented towards the firm's attorneys of color. Recent
events include a panel on mentoring issues, a summer event at a local entertainment
venue, and a cocktail party at a nearby restaurant. The AOC group's meetings
and events are intended to provide opportunities for the firm's attorneys of
color to share their unique experiences within the firm, to encourage mentoring
relationships among the more senior and junior attorneys through its Full Circle
mentoring program, and to ensure that attorneys of color feel welcomed and supported.
Pictured here are attendees at events the group hosted this spring and last summer.
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| Here are a few photos from our Attorneys
of Color event welcoming the first-year associates to Ropes & Gray. |
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The Attorneys of Color group gets together periodically to discuss relevant topics that pertain to them as a group. Our diversity symposium pictured below attracted a large group of AOC's from all our offices. |
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Many from our AOC group, as well as John Montgomery, Managing Partner, and other colleagues participated in the Walk to the Hill for Legal Aid to encourage legislators to provide adequate funding for legal aid programs.
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For more
information about the firm's diversity commitment as it applies to
attorneys of
color
at
Ropes & Gray,
please contact Hemmie
Chang or Dennis
Coleman.
If you are interested in viewing personal biographies of some of our
Attorneys of Color, please click on the name below.
Amanda Austin
Andrea Brobeil
Rajib Chanda
Hemmie Chang
Hsin Chau
Ken Chow
Dennis Coleman
Brenda Godoy
Sara Gutierrez
Giselle Joffre
William Kim
Edgar Kwee
Priti Langer
Gene Lee
Janise Lee
Michael Lee
Winifred Li
Joy Liu
Yu Lu
Raj Marphatia
Shawnte Mitchell
Sasha Rao
Monica Singh
Andrew Sung
Erika Takeuchi
Trey Tepichin
Roscoe Trimmier
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