Diversity: Women's Initiatives

As chair of the Women's Leadership Forum, I am proud of McGuireWoods’ commitment to women lawyers’ success. This year, McGuireWoods was honored by Working Mother magazine as one of the Best 50 Law Firms in the United States for Women Lawyers. One of the ways we support women lawyers is through the McGuireWoods’ Leadership Forum. We also have a leading-edge parental leave program and part-time lawyer policy which provides a work-life balance that few law firms match.

Since joining the firm in 1998 as a lateral associate, I have personally witnessed and benefited from McGuireWoods commitment to diversity and, more specifically, the development and retention of women at the firm. I was promoted to non-equity partner the year following my three-month maternity leave for the birth of my eldest daughter. It was at that time I began to work at home on Fridays, with the full support of our Firm's management, and that flexible arrangement continues to this day. Two years later, and following the birth of my second child, I was promoted to equity partnership.

Over the years, I have served as mentor to female attorneys in our firm. Currently I am a member of our Firm's Diversity Committee, the Nominating Committee for our Board of Partners, the Charlotte Recruiting Committee, and now, Chair of the Women's Leadership Forum. These roles have allowed me to expand our firm's efforts in recruiting and retaining our best and brightest female attorneys. I am very proud of McGuireWoods being an industry leader in its policies for family leave and for part-time and flex-time work arrangements.

The Women’s Leadership Forum is an excellent example of McGuireWoods’ commitment to being a law firm of choice for the best and the brightest women attorneys.

About the McGuireWoods’ Women’s Leadership Forum

Internally, the Women’s Leadership Forum offers mentoring programs and hands-on training to our women lawyers. Externally, the forum provides networking events for women lawyers and clients. Each year, we organize events for forum members to meet other influential women, exchange information, share concerns, and discuss topics of interest. Events are geared toward enriching their personal and professional lives. The Women’s Leadership Forum also sponsors professional development opportunities for women lawyers.
 

Linda Greenhouse, New York Times correspondent for the
U.S. Supreme Court and the author of Becoming Justice
Blackmun, was the guest speaker at a McGuireWoods'
Women's Leadership Forum event in our New York office.

Supporting Work/Life Balance

In 2008, after being named one of the 50 inaugural “Best Law Firms for Women Lawyers” in Working Mother magazine, McGuireWoods LLP partnered with the magazine to provide a seminar entitled “The Search for Work/Life Balance.”

McGuireWoods is the first law firm to partner with Working Mother to offer to these seminars to provide career women in leadership roles with time management advice and a workshop where attendees can create a plan for creating personal work/life balance.

Carol Evans, founder and chief executive officer of Working Mother,
is the keynote speaker for all three seminars.

Women In Leadership Roles In McGuireWoods

As with any successful business initiative, the diversity mandate begins and ends with management. Our management’s commitment to recruitment, training and retention of diverse lawyers is not limited to a single committee: it is a core component of the firm’s Strategic Plan. Perhaps the best evidence of the Strategic Plan’s implementation lies in the number of leadership positions held by minority and women partners.

Two of the five members of our Executive Committee are women. A woman serves as deputy managing partner. The firm also has women chairing departments and serving as office managing partners. Our women attorneys hold leadership positions within the firm and manage a number of the firm's top client teams. The number of women the firm has in leadership roles is one of the major reasons cited by Working Mother magazine for McGuireWoods to receive the honor of being recognized as a “Top Law Firm For Women Lawyers.”

Yvette Harmon, a partner in McGuireWoods’ New York office
and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee, accepted
the Working Mother Magazine’s “Best Law Firms for Women Lawyers”
on behalf of the law firm.

Some examples of our women in leadership positions are:

  • Nancy R. Little, a partner in Richmond, is deputy managing partner for the firm.

  • Yvette Harmon, a partner in New York, is an Executive Committee member and serves on the Board of Partners.

  • Anne Marie Whittemore, a partner in Richmond, is an Executive Committee member and serves on the Board of Partners.

  • Jacquelyn Stone, an African-American partner in Richmond, is a Board of Partners member, is the firm-wide Hiring Partner, and the Recruiting Committee Chair.

  • M. Melissa Glassman, a partner in Tysons Corner, Va., is chair of the Commercial Litigation Department, the Managing Partner of the Tysons Corner office, and serves on the firms’ Board of Partners.

  • Marta A. Stein, a partner in Chicago, is national co-chair of the Banking Litigation Group.

  • Janet P. Peyton, a partner in Richmond, is chair of the Intellectual Property, Data and Privacy practice group within the firm's Technology and Business Department.

  • Amy B. Manning, a partner in Chicago, serves on the Recruiting Committee, the Associates Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee.

  • Sally E. Edison, a partner in Pittsburgh, serves on the Recruiting Committee and the Diversity Committee.

  • Sally Doubet King, a partner in Chicago, serves on the Conflicts Committee.

  • Stephanie P. Karn (Richmond), Ronda Brown Esaw (Tysons Corner), and Ruthie L. Goodboe (Norfolk), partners, serve on the Recruiting Committee.

Recruiting, Promoting and Retaining Women Lawyers

We actively seek to recruit and retain women associates, and annually promote a significant number of women to partner status. Over the past several years, McGuireWoods’ incoming fall associate classes represent a strong percentage of female attorneys. For the past two incoming fall classes, more than 50% of the associates were female.

Because retaining women lawyers is important to McGuireWoods, the firm offers some of the most comprehensive and attractive parental leave policies of large law firms in the United States. We also offer a very progressive part-time policy. McGuireWoods’ Women’s Leadership Forum has been very active in making sure these sorts of programs are available to support all of our lawyers in pursuing a work-life balance.

Outreach to Support Women Lawyers

McGuireWoods is pleased to take a leadership role as one of the first signatories to the Chicago Bar Association Call to Action. The Call to Action sets five goals for law firms to attain by 2007 including increasing the percentage of women partners; increasing representation on firm committees; increasing representation as practice area leaders; reviewing flexible or part-time policies; and improving disparities in retention, promotion and lateral recruiting.

McGuireWoods takes a further active role in the support of female law students by serving as one of the founding sponsors of Ms. JD – a new blog forum for dialogue and networking among women in the legal profession, created by a committee of women from the top 14 U.S. law schools. Posts deal with issues women face in the profession, including gender in the workplace and classroom, work-life balance issues, interviewing tips and information, and more.

Women’s Leadership Forum 2008 Regional Chairs

 

Office Chair Co-Chair
Almaty, Kazahkstan Dinara Jarmukhanova --
Atlanta, GA Angela Spivey Chandra Davis
Baltimore, MD Cheryl O’Donnell Guth Jennifer Stearman
Brussels, Belgium Christiane Zuniga Bénédicte Raevens
Charlotte, NC Susan Dion Trish Hosmer
Charlottesville, VA Suzanne Bednar --
Chicago, IL -- Marta Stein
Jacksonville, FL Lisa Purvis --
Los Angeles Susan Germaise Lynn Whitcher Alvarez
New York, NY Kathleen Trabold --
Norfolk, VA LaTisha Chatman Karen Duncan
Pittsburgh, PA Sally Edison Jen Cairns
Richmond, VA Anne McCray Christine Mehfoud
Tysons Corner, VA Dorothea Dickerman Kristen Moye
Washington, DC -- --