Gardere Earns Highest Firm Score on Austin Law Firm Diversity Report Card
Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP is pleased to announce that the Firm has received the highest composite score of all reporting firms in the 2015 Law Firm Diversity Report Card, issued by the Austin Minority Bar Associations and the Travis County Women Lawyers Association. For the third consecutive year, the Firm also earned an “A” grade for its exceptional diversity recruitment, hiring and retention efforts.
“Diversity in the workplace, generally, results in a stronger organization,” says Firm Chair Holland N. O’Neil. “A stronger organization just makes good business sense. We applaud all the firms who received high marks on the report card. This is an important barometer to Gardere, and we intend to strive to do even better in future years.”
The report card is issued annually by the Hispanic Bar Association of Austin, the Austin Black Lawyers Association, the Austin Asian American Bar Association, the South Asian Bar Association of Austin and the Austin LGBT Bar Association. For the first time, the bar associations have partnered with the Travis County Women Lawyers Association to include data on the hiring, retention and promotion of women at major law firms in the Austin area.
This year, the Diversity Report Card Committee requested information from 28 of the largest law firms in Austin, of which 24 submitted responses. These 24 firms were then evaluated and provided a grade based on their percentage of minority attorneys and partners. The committee also factored in data on attorneys who are openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. In addition, grading is weighted in favor of law firms that have larger numbers of minority partners to reflect the importance in developing, promoting and retaining those attorneys. Only 11 of the 24 firms that responded received an “A” grade on the report card. The committee issued a separate report on the number of women associates, non-equity partners and partners at each of the 24 firms.
Gardere was proud to sponsor the DRCC’s 2015 Law Firm Report Card Reception on Tuesday, Aug. 9 in the Firm’s Austin office. More information about the Austin Law Firm Diversity Report Card and access to the full results can be viewed here.