Attorneys Working Toward the Tipping Point for Diversity - The Bar ...

ATTORNEYS WORKING TOWARD
THE TIPPING POINT FOR DIVERSITY

Behind many of the legal community’s efforts to pump up the diversity pipeline
are attorneys who have a profound commitment to changing the profession.
They hail from large and small firms, solo practices, the bench, government
offices, and nonprofits. Some, perhaps not surprisingly, are related, such
as the powerhouse of sisters Kamala Harris, San Francisco’s district attorney, and
Maya Harris, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California, and her husband,
Morrison & Foerster partner Tony West. What they share in common is a
nearly bottomless resource of energy to work toward what many hope is the tipping
point for diversity in the profession.
MAYA HARRIS
In many ways, Maya Harris, now one year into her tenure as
executive director of the ACLU of Northern California, has
been working toward opening the pipeline for ethnic and
racial minorities for her entire legal career.
She and sister Kamala Harris,
the city’s district attorney, grew
up in Oakland and Berkeley in
the 1960s and 1970s. Their
mother was a graduate student
at UC Berkeley during the civil
rights movement. “Her activism
was the subject of our dinner
conversations,” says Harris. “I
knew the law could have a big
impact shaping the social playing
field, that lawyers could foster
progressive change.”
Her mother drilled one thing
into her daughters: “to whom
much is given, much is expected.” Since graduating from
Stanford Law School, she has worked in roles seeking racial
justice, specifically around the issues of criminal justice and
educational equity. “When I look at the work I have done,
whether it’s focused on policy or litigation, the emphasis has
been the pursuit of fairness, equality, opportunity, and inclusion,”
Harris says.
“I’ve been fortunate to be involved in efforts which I think
have allowed us to make progress, but I feel like this work is
a marathon. It’s a long road. We are making progress along
the way, but we also have setbacks. You need to stay focused
on what it is you are trying to achieve and persevere.”
“If you don’t have kids
of all races and ethnicities
and income levels being
provided with equal
opportunities to succeed
in the K–12 level,
we will never solve
this pipeline problem.”
Susan Kostal
The ACLU sees pipeline issues as key to personal success,
both inside and outside the legal profession, Harris says.
“Our mission and our substantive agenda are very directly
focused on ensuring that those opportunities are available
and that we are able to achieve that diversity. We’ve been concerned,
for example, about how kids of color are being
pushed out of school and, sometimes,
into the criminal justice
system. We’ve been achieving success
in our efforts to stem those
practices,” Harris says.
Harris believes that diversity in
the legal profession is a special
concern. In tackling the issue,
Harris says we need to “look as far
upstream as possible” and focus
on the education system. “It is
not just a question of are our law
schools diverse enough, but what
is happening in all institutions of
higher education, our colleges
and universities, and also K–12 education. If you don’t have
kids of all races and ethnicities and income levels being provided
with equal opportunities to succeed in the K–12 level,
we will never solve this pipeline problem.”
The ALCU won a favorable settlement in Williams v. California
in 2004. The case sought to make amends for poorquality
textbooks, facilities, and resources in schools serving
low-income students. After four years of litigation, a landmark
settlement was won; it stipulated that nearly $1 billion
be spent on repairs and updated textbooks for the state’s
lowest-performing schools, where the students are overwhelmingly
poor and children of color.
Opposite page: from left, Kamala Harris, Tony West, Maya Harris
THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 19

What does it mean that the Northern
California chapter, the ACLU’s largest
national affiliate, is led by a woman of
color (Harris’s mother is Indian American,
having emigrated in 1960, and her
father is Jamaican American.) “Every
experience you have is informed by so
many things—your gender, your race,
your ethnicity, your upbringing. I bring
all that to the ACLU,” Harris says.
“My mom always said you may have a
lot of firsts in life, but make sure you
are not the last. It is not about you; it is
about what you do. I think that everyone
who is in a position of authority
and power and decision making has a
responsibility to create opportunities
for others, especially those who have
not had equal opportunities, who are
underrepresented, those who would
bring different life experiences to the
workplace and the work. Because that matters; it necessarily
impacts the workplace and the work.”
“I know doors were opened to me by others. I don’t take
lightly my responsibility to not just keep those doors open
but to open them wider.”
Harris has mentored law students,
both within and outside the ACLU. “I
view that as an important part of my
job and my life’s mission,” she says. “In
every position I’ve had, whether it’s
been teaching in law school, as an associate
at a law firm, and through various
positions at the ACLU, I’ve always
looked for ways to both formally and informally be able to
support the development of other young lawyers.”
Like her sister, Harris does a lot of public speaking, often at
local colleges, and is frequently at press conferences (though
they could be viewed to be on opposite sides of some issues,
it has yet to happen that the two women have had to oppose
each other at press conferences). “The running joke in the
family is people look at us and say, ‘gosh, I can’t imagine what
Thanksgiving is like at your house. The DA is at one end of
the table, the head of the ACLU is at the other, and there is
Tony [West, her husband], a former prosecutor turned defense
attorney, literally in the middle.”
TONY WEST
Tony West has always stood out.
Whether it was his early work in
politics, or his successes early in his
career as an assistant U.S. attorney
or deputy attorney general, or his career
at Morrison & Foerster, where
he is one of the protégés of James
Brosnahan, West has had high-profile
cases. And he’s part of a highprofile
family. He is married to
Maya Harris, executive director of
the ACLU of Northern California,
the organization’s largest affiliate.
His sister-in-law is Kamala Harris,
San Francisco’s district attorney.
But his most lasting success may end
up being the years he has spent as
hiring partner for Morrison &
Foerster’s San Francisco office. (He
spent three years as an official hiring
partner but was active in the process before he was named
partner in January 2004.)
“During those years, we had the most diverse summer classes
in MoFo’s memory,” says West. The firm’s success casts
doubts on the refrain that there are simply not enough minority
candidates coming out of law school to meet the demands
of large legal employers.
The firm’s National Association for Law Placement (NALP)
forms bear this out. This year, 52 percent of the office’s
twenty-five summer associates were racial and ethnic minorities
or openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT)
lawyers. Some 44 percent of the office’s associates this year,
65 out of 145, were ethnic or racial minorities or openly
LGBT attorneys.
Previous years have similar statistics. Last year, 46 percent of
the San Francisco office’s summer associates and 36.9 percent
of associates were minority or LGBT attorneys. In 2005,
65 percent of the summer associates were minorities or
openly LGBT attorneys, and 40.5 percent of its associates. In
2004, 35 percent of its summer associates were minority or
LGBT students, and 39.7 percent of associates. In 2003, the
first year West was active in recruiting, half of the office’s
summer associates were minorities or LGBT law students,
and 38.2 percent of its associates.
20 WINTER 2007

“There was a very deliberate effort by those involved in recruiting,”
and a team effort, says West. “It was certainly why
I wanted to be hiring partner. I wanted it to be a rule that we
hired 50 percent students of color. We are able to make that
an institutional reality.”
West feels confident those numbers will continue. “I know
it is the philosophy of our chairman, Keith Wetmore,” he
says. “If we are going to get to the point where we really need
to be, which is that the profession reflects the richness of the
community we serve, then diversity has to be part and parcel
to any business plan. It has to be so ingrained in the way
we think about how we grow the profession, how we grow
firms, how we recruit, how we make a profit, that we don’t
think about it. And we are not there yet.”
“If we are going to get
to the point where
we really need to be,
which is that the profession
reflects the richness
of the community we serve,
then diversity has to be
part and parcel
to any business plan”
And as for the claim there are not enough high-quality minority
candidates “That is just not true,” he says. “It is true
that large law firms tend to compete for the same students
from Boalt, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and the like. But what
that misses is that there are talented students of color in many
places, coming out of many law schools. If your focus is on
talent, as opposed to pedigree, you can be successful in recruiting
talented attorneys of color.”
West and fellow San Francisco partner Walter Conroy did it
by recruiting at schools like Howard University, a historically
black university in Washington, D.C. “One of our star summer
associates from last summer, Michele Thomas, was a
Howard law graduate. We had not been to Howard before,”
West says. West also met strong candidates through the various
organizations and political groups in which he is active.
“You find legal talent in so many different places. One of the
individuals we had as a summer associate is someone I met
in the Charles Houston Bar Association. Another person,
whom we offered a summer associate position for next summer,
I first met while working on Barack Obama’s campaign.”
(West is one of the cochairs of Obama’s presidential
efforts in California.)
West says the firm didn’t have any particular reaction to the
diversity of the summer class, “other than we had a really
good group of students as summer associates
coming through.”
“I feel good about what we have done, but I am not satisfied
where we are,” says West. “I’m excited about the challenge of
continuing to do more.”
“Clearly, I always have been cognizant of the fact that I am
one of a very few African American partners in a major law
firm. I’ve been very fortunate; others have paved the way for
me. It has always been uppermost in my mind that there is
perhaps a special responsibility that I carry to make sure
the door is open for others. I don’t want to be the exception
to the rule. I want to be the example of what the rule
should be.”
That said, West says he believes he has a special responsibility
to remind others “that it [diversity] is everyone’s job.”
KAMALA HARRIS
When you talk with Kamala Harris about diversity in the
profession, don’t expect her to talk about the business case for
diversity. For the city’s district attorney, diversity runs much
deeper than that.
“Diversity is critical to good law enforcement. We stand up
in the courtroom every day and declare we are representing
the people, and the people means all the people. In order for
us to do that appropriately, we need to be connected with,
accessible to, and in touch with all the people in our community.
We have a diverse community, and it’s important that
the experiences of those communities are present when the
people are represented.”
Harris, who was reelected in November, and her sister Maya
Harris, who is executive director of the ACLU of Northern
California, are among the highest profile attorneys of color
in the city. Since Harris was first elected district attorney in
December 2003 (according to her Wikipedia entry, she’s the
city’s first woman, the state’s first African American woman,
and the country’s first Indian American district attorney),
she has been able to increase the diversity of the office. Some
85 percent of her new hires from 2004 to 2006 have been
women, people of color, or LGBT, she says.
THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 21

“While I have been a beneficiary of
affirmative action, these are not affirmative
action hires,” she says. “All the
people I hire are extremely competent
and competitive and would be valued
in any prosecutor’s office. One of the
misconceptions is that if you pay attention
to diversity, you are neglecting
performance and competence, and nothing could be further
from the truth.”
Harris says she does feel a special responsibility to continue
to work toward a more diverse profession. “But it is not because
of who I am; it is because of what I do. I am a lawyer;
a prosecutor. I’m a trial lawyer. When you want to make a
decision that has the best outcome for justice, then part of the
process is to have people believe it is fair and represents all
people in an even-handed way. One of the best ways to make
decisions relative and fair is to take into account all perspectives
and experiences. And that means having a commitment
to diversity, so the diverse experiences of human beings will
be present when we make those decisions.”
HELEN SANTANA
“There aren’t enough role models in prominent view of how
a woman of color can achieve success,” Harris says. “When I
was a young prosecutor in Alameda County, it was important
for domestic violence or rape victims to be able to see a
woman they perceived as being in control and strong. It was
very empowering, especially when they felt that person identified
with them and saw them for who they were.”
Harris firmly believes there are “pipeline issues.” “There are
not enough young people choosing law school over other
professions. If we are going to make a commitment to diversity
in the legal workplace, we need to be committed to outreach
to college students of color, to create meaningful
opportunities for them to be accepted into and survive law
school, to then graduate and come into the work environment,”
says Harris. Those who interpret the Constitution
have a powerful role, Harris says. And if there are fewer
African American and Latino lawyers, that means their voices
will be lost as the law develops.
Harris has launched her own initiative to get nonviolent firstoffense
eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old drug defendants back
in the education and work force system. Called Back on Track,
it’s her flagship “smart on crime” initiative and has been copied
by other prosecutors. The program has reduced the recidivism
rate of these defendants considerably (from 50 percent to less
than 10 percent, Harris says). And while she doesn’t know if
any have gone on to law school, some have gone on to fouryear
universities and have the potential to go beyond that. “I
think some of those Back on Track participants could be tomorrow’s
lawyers. They are not there because they have a low
IQ. They have the capacity; it is just getting them on the right
track, which is the best way to reduce crime.”
Photo by Martha Bruce Photography
Helen Santana has been opening doors through hard work
and reaching out to others since she became a lawyer. The
first generation in her family to go to graduate school in the
United States (along with her brother, who is also an
attorney), Santana has spent much of her career assuring that
others have the same opportunities.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Santana had an internship
in an insurance office while she was still in high school.
She kept up her ties with the company while attending
the University of San Francisco and then Golden Gate
University School of Law, where she graduated in 1991.
In 1996, she joined Liberty Mutual, and today Santana is
the manager of the Liberty Mutual San Francisco field
office, which handles workers’ compensation and civil
litigation in the San Francisco Bay Area, supervising a staff
of forty-eight, in cluding twenty attorneys, nine paralegals,
and other support staff. Santana received an MBA from
Golden Gate University in 2005.
22 WINTER 2007

She oversees a diverse staff, and this year Santana and Liberty
Mutual were honored by Golden Gate University School
of Law as its employer of the year.
the way. This is a good way to give back. It opens up opportunities
to people and diversifies the field of candidates to be
considered by different types of companies and law firms.”
About eight years ago, she began to get involved in minority
bar activities and within several years was engaged in leadership
roles, particularly in the Hispanic National Bar Association
(HNBA), where she serves as regional president for
Northern California and Hawaii, and she is a key leader in a
mentoring program HNBA rolled
out last year.
Partnering locally with San Francisco
La Raza Lawyers Association (Santana
is on its board, as well), HNBA
currently has forty pairs of mentors
and mentees, most of whom are law
students. “We paired them up to have
someone guide them along a professional
path,” says Santana. “We did
not want to force anything; it has
been an informal process. We have
had a couple of events so they can get
to know one another.”
Some of the pairings have proved very beneficial. “One law
student, who played a vital part in implementing the program,
is now working her way up the ladder within the
HNBA’s Law Student Division. The law student is a 3L at
Hastings, was elected president of her region, and is now running
for national office.”
Santana says the pairings have helped the law students become
more firmly involved in minority bar associations, an
involvement that provides them with opportunities to practice
their leadership skills, network, and become more firmly
grounded as professionals.
In her experience, being part of a mentorship program is
often the factor that makes or breaks a new lawyer’s early
career. “Some law students and attorneys have wanted to
leave their jobs at firms that did not have a mentoring
component,” she says. “They do not always see the potential
for promotional opportunities within their firms. You
need to know how to maneuver the corporate ladder,
network, and seek out those who can assist you to climb to
those aspirations.”
Santana says she is fortunate to have found those who could
guide her. “Mentoring is something that really can have an
impact. I was lucky to have people who mentored me along
“Mentoring is
something that
really can have an
impact. I was lucky
to have people
who mentored me
along the way.”
HNBA also hosts an annual job fair, which gets strong reviews
from employers. “Employers tell us they are impressed
with the overall caliber of students that come out of these job
fairs. They often open doors for students who would not otherwise
be able to get an interview with a large firm or large
company. The exposure that comes
from that job fair is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity. There are some high-quality
candidates out there who have never
had the ability to get through the door.”
Under the leadership of HNBA National
President Victor M. Marquez,
principal of the Marquez Law Group,
Santana’s local HNBA region is looking
at expanding the mentorship program
to forge tripartite relationships and to
include lawyers in their first five years of
practice. The idea is that the three (law
student, associate, senior attorney)
would be able to teach and energize each other. “There are a
lot of attorneys out there in that middle to junior tier that
are very talented. I do not see why they should not be able to
move into the partnership ranks,” Santana says. There is a
lack of minority attorneys in those senior ranks, “but that is
going to change, I am confident of that.”
Santana and HNBA have been able to accomplish much by
harnessing the resources of local employers, including Liberty
Mutual, which has been a sponsor for the last two national
conventions. Liberty Mutual was also one of the
cohosts, for example, of HNBA’s kickoff reception for its national
mentoring program last year. Additionally, Liberty
Mutual has supported Santana’s participation in the HNBA,
for which she is very appreciative.
Santana says numerous BASF contacts have been very helpful
and supportive of her efforts with La Raza and HNBA, including
Edwin Prather, a criminal defense lawyer with
Clarence & Dyer and the president of the Asian American
Bar Association and a former BASF board member; Russell
Roeca, BASF treasurer; and Abby Ginzberg, who helped coordinate
BASF’s diversity projects before Yolanda Jackson
joined the staff.
THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 23

Through it all, he has written and spoken regularly on race
and diversity issues and been involved in a range of bar
groups, including BASF and its Diversity Task Force, the executive
committee of the California Minority Counsel Program,
and the board of the Asian American Bar Association.
“Diversity in the legal profession is very important to me. I
care about it, have invested in it, have a lot of feelings and
opinions on it, and choose to devote my time to it.”
There has been some positive news in the local legal community’s
commitment to diversity, Weng says. But despite
the good words and sentiments, which are an important first
step, “in terms of what has actually happened, I have some
frustration and impatience, because we are not as far along as
I would have hoped.”
Most firms have commitments to diversity on their Web
sites, and it’s easy to go on the Internet and find corporate
best practices. Bar groups continue to host diversity conferences,
which the tried and true continue to attend. Weng
says that with all this information out there, you would think
it would be easier, but apparently, it is not. He thinks that although
people mean quite well, it’s hard to really implement
measures that make a real change in the makeup of law firms
and corporate law offices.
GARNER WENG
Garner Weng is one of those people who seem to defy the
physical laws that bind the rest of us. For one, he juggles a
practice that includes both litigation and transactional work.
With two degrees from Stanford (a BS in computer science
and an MA in education), Weng is a Boalt Hall graduate,
law review editor, and former class president. When he
joined Hanson Bridgett, he made partner faster than anyone
since the firm established a partnership track. He soon became
one of the youngest to chair a practice group (emerging
companies) and then one of the youngest partners on the
firm’s management committee.
That’s because, as Weng has found, it comes down to influencing
one person at a time. And that’s a slow process. “I’ve
written things that have gotten a lot of circulation. Perhaps
“Diversity in the legal
profession is very
important to me. I care
about it, have invested
in it, have a lot of
feelings and opinions
on it, and choose to
devote my time to it.”
you can stop and get people to think and absorb an
additional idea, but overall your impact in that fashion is
still limited. I don’t think that is really changing the
world. Whereas if you work with an individual, in a smaller
setting, you can see things happen, move that individual
along, move the group along in a real and concrete way.
That’s what gets you the most traction and allows you to have
the most influence. It really is as hard as a person at a time,”
Weng says.
Weng started in his own backyard. “[At Hanson Bridgett]
we’ve gotten some traction in our diversity efforts,” says
Weng. “There is a general culture here of friendly collaboration
and teamwork that’s not always present in every law
firm. It runs fairly deep here. We bring in work together and
work in teams together. And that plays into our general atmosphere
of inclusiveness.”
24 WINTER 2007

That means there is no impediment
to Hanson Bridgett’s diversity efforts,
he says. Since 1989, Hanson Bridgett
has increased its percentage of associates
of color by nearly four times and
its percentage of partners and senior
counsel of color by more than three
times. Weng is on the recruiting committee
and says Hanson Bridgett has made strides in its minority
hiring. “There is a greater percentage of minority
partners and associates since I started at the firm. The firm
has grown, and the percentages have gotten better, but not as
fast as I would like to see them change.”
Weng said the problem is not finding top candidates. It’s in
convincing them that a small firm like Hanson Bridgett is
where they should be. Weng tries to lure them by showing
them his own career path, illustrating that it’s easier to build
your own career and book of business at Hanson Bridgett than
it might be at a larger firm. “Generally, the focus in big firms
is on larger clients and larger matters, so sometimes our size
helps us,” he says.
KELLY DERMODY
Kelly Dermody has had the privilege of practicing law in a
firm that has one of the most successful gay attorneys in the
country at its helm.
But Dermody, a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein,
knows all too well that is not the experience of most
LGBT attorneys in the city. Dermody, along with Morgan
Lewis & Bockius attorney L. Julius M. Turman, spearheaded
the November report from the BASF Equality Committee
on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues on LGBT
attorneys in San Francisco, which showed that those attorneys
face both subtle and direct bias, whether it is personal or
in the types of employee benefits firms offer.
“There hasn’t been a huge push from LGBT attorneys to have
numbers studies [similar to the bar’s diversity goals and
timetables]. People do not perceive the issue as predominantly
about counting numbers,” Dermody says. Indeed, in
at least the Bay Area, firms have made “enormous strides” in
hiring and promoting gay and lesbian attorneys into positions
of prominence.
“From my own experience, when I sought out opportunities
to progress in my career, I just never felt like my race was an
issue. It came down to talent, desire, and interest.” Weng says
the California Minority Counsel Program (CMCP) played
an important role, providing contacts and the opportunity
to build relationships that ultimately led to work. Others
have had similar results with CMCP, he says.
Weng believes BASF will play a larger role in advancing the
careers of minority attorneys now that the bar has hired
Yolanda Jackson as its director of diversity programs. “I feel
like the bar has a lot of potential. It has a strong, wide membership
base and resources that many other organizations
don’t have.”
Weng is involved personally in pipeline efforts. He serves on
the advisory committee to Boalt Hall Professor Marjorie
Shultz’s and UC Berkeley Professor Sheldon Zedeck’s Looking
Beyond the LSAT project at Boalt Hall, which looks at
how much—or how little—the LSAT is a proper measure of
what is a good lawyer. The project’s research hopes to identify
other factors that law firms should consider and to
reform the LSAT itself. Weng also persuaded Hanson Bridgett
to become a funder of the research. “This is a direct investment
in the future of the profession,” he says. “Law
schools serve a gatekeeper function. If we could add another
level of diversity at the law school level, it would be a very
positive thing.”

“What has been driving the LGBT
community to seek more leadership
from the bar, and for the bar to respond,
is the perception among
LGBT attorneys that, in spite of improvements
in firm culture and inclusivity,
there have been institutional
issues in achieving a firm culture that
is truly fair and welcoming to all attorneys,” Dermody says.
The goal has been to point out some of the subtle biases and
show legal employers ways to rectify that. “There are still benefits
programs that disadvantage LGBT lawyers. There are
still pockets where a lack of comfort or familiarity with LGBT
people results in things that are said and done that are very
uncomfortable. Some clients are still uncomfortable with
LGBT people.”
Dermody called it “one of those funny truths about San Francisco.”
Despite the number of LGBT attorneys in the city,
“when I talk to friends of mine who work at other firms, including
other progressive firms, they describe some pretty unfortunate
situations, where they are not mentored, or clients
do not want to work with them. There is a particular culture
that exists in which if you don’t look like a feminine
woman or a masculine man, you are disfavored. It continues
to be a gendered culture at some firms.”
The committee’s focus is not a survey of law firm hiring and
promotion statistics, then, but an effort to inform firms about
the experiences of LGBT attorneys and catalogue best practices
in the hiring and retention of LGBT attorneys. “Firms
that don’t pay attention to what cultures are being created
run the risk of having a whole lot of attorneys perceive the
firm as being inhospitable to LGBT attorneys.” Dermody
says. And those attorneys, for many, are seen as the canaries
in the coal mines. In other words, the firm’s treatment of
LGBT attorneys sends a message to all.
Complicating matters is new evidence from both state and
local bar surveys that LGBT attorneys are highly reluctant to
complain. According to a recent State Bar of California survey,
“a large number of LGBT attorneys reported experiencing
unfairness in legal organizations, but none reported it to
anyone,” Dermody says.
“Something is happening at firms with LGBT attorneys. If
they perceive something is not working, they don’t say anything.
They are leaving” instead. Both Dermody and Turman
said LGBT attorneys believe they won’t be treated appropriately
or seriously if they complain. “They think complaining
will do more harm than good. So firms are not getting the
message that there is even a problem, much less that they
need to change,” Dermody says.
The BASF report, published at the end of November, has
concrete recommendations for firms that want to improve
conditions for their LGBT attorneys and, by extension, all
attorneys. “Firms assume that having a policy of fairness
means the firm is fair. That is misguided. Passive policies don’t
result in actual fairness. People need to be much more proactive
and self-critical to ensure fairness is actualized.”
It is perhaps not at all ironic that two employment lawyers
head the BASF Equality Committee on LGBT Issues. While
Dermody also handles consumer fraud cases, she has been
opposite Turman in at least one high-level employment case.
“Julius defends the companies I sue,” Dermody says.
BASF’s Equality Committee on LGBT Issues is just one outlet
for Dermody. On the BASF board of directors, she is also on the
board (and has served as past board cochair) of the National Center
for Lesbian Rights, as well as having served as past board
cochair for both the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the
Pride Law Fund, a nonprofit that promotes the legal rights of
the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and people
living with HIV and AIDS. Pride Law Fund funds legal services
projects for law students and new lawyers, including through
the Tom Steel Postgraduate Fellowship, which Dermody helped
launch in 1999. Dermody is currently helping to launch Carver
Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools
(Carver HEARTS), which will fund a therapist at Dr. George
Washington Carver Elementary School in Bayview-Hunter’s
Point to assist children process their exposure to trauma and violence
and to address the epidemic of stress and posttraumatic
stress disorder among students and their families.
“Firms that don’t pay
attention to what cultures
are being created
run the risk of having
a whole lot of attorneys
perceive the firm
as being inhospitable
to LGBT attorneys.”
26 WINTER 2007

L. JULIUS M. TURMAN
Even though moving his practice here made it much easier to
be openly gay, he has found that San Francisco is not the ideal
environment some might believe, or wish, it to be.
“People here have the view that we are out there, we are
functioning well, and everything is fine. What I can tell you,
both by anecdotal evidence and survey information, is that
LBGT attorneys do have issues that come up in their firms,”
Turman says.
Turman is cochair, along with Kelly Dermody of Lieff
Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, of BASF’s Equality Committee
on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues,
under the rubric of BASF’s Equality Committees. In January
2007 the subcommittee began studying what it could do
to improve the life of the city’s LGBT attorneys. That work
led to local surveys that showed that LGBT attorneys experience
discrimination but do not report it. “They are reluctant
to have those issues addressed,” says Turman. A recent
State Bar survey found similar results.
Turman, Dermody, and others have worked diligently to
bring those issues to light. In a report that came out in November,
the committee highlights the sometimes subtle discrimination
LGBT attorneys face and reinforces that the
needs of LGBT attorneys merit attention.
For years, there has been some discussion that BASF should
track LGBT associates and partners as part of its diversity
goals and timetables. Firms already track such data on
NALP forms.
L. Julius M. Turman did not always practice law in the Bay
Area. He began his career on the East Coast as an assistant
U.S. attorney in New Jersey and then later worked as corporate
counsel to Ketchum Worldwide Communications.
That he was a black man was clear. That he was gay was not.
“In those days, being LGBT was taboo,” Turman says. “It
was an eye-opening experience to come to San Francisco” and
Morgan Lewis & Bockius, where he is of counsel in the firm’s
San Francisco office in the labor and employment practice
group. He joined the firm in February 2006.
He quickly became involved in a host of local bar activities,
including the BASF board of directors, the Charles Houston
Bar Association, the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club,
Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, and the Magic
Theatre. He serves on the boards or as cochair of most of the
groups with which he is involved .
The report should help rectify that. “I don’t think that people
have been overlooked,” says Turman. “They’ve been sort
of ignored by assumption that things are fine—especially in
San Francisco.”
The goal of the committee is to empower both LGBT attorneys
and firms to work on eliminating the subtle bias and
stereotypes the State Bar survey shows do exist. “There is so
much a firm can do, with little expense, to improve its culture
by showing it wants to recruit the best and brightest, which
include LGBT attorneys,” says Turman. “They want pro bono
projects that reflect an overall commitment to diversity, and
that includes professional development and cultural sensitivities
to the life of LGBT attorneys in a large firm.”
For example, Turman says, many firms believe they offer
LGBT attorneys and their partners the same benefits they
offer all employees. “But when you drill down, because there
are no federal protections, a lot of plans don’t treat the partners
and families of LGBT attorneys as they treat families of
straight attorneys. They don’t clearly understand their obliga-
THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 27

tions if these families don’t naturally fall under COBRA.”
(The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act—
COBRA—is the federal law covering health benefit plans.)
When Turman isn’t working on changing the broader environment
for LGBT attorneys, he’s working on influencing
the careers of individual attorneys, one mentee at a time.
“Mentoring young attorneys, be they black, white, straight,
gay, is something that I live for. I love practicing law, I love
the firm I am with, and I love sharing what’s good about that
experience with anyone who will listen.”
Turman says there is a misconception about what mentoring
relationships should focus on. “Mentoring is not about going
“There is so much
a firm can do, with
little expense, to improve
its culture by showing
it wants to recruit
the best and brightest,
which include
LGBT attorneys.”
Simply put, as the population of California shifts, the bench
is falling further behind in mirroring the people it serves. Statistics
from the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC)
show the bench is 70 percent Caucasian; Caucasians, however,
are now a minority population in California. Retiring
ethnic minority judges are not being replaced with ethnic minority
appointees. “Our bench has been in a period of retrenchment,
so to speak, and becoming less and less like the
population judges are serving,” Harbin-Forte says. Is the
problem in the pipeline or the process
It is, Harbin-Forte’s group concluded, both. But in a short
period of time, the group, an outgrowth of the State Bar’s
Diversity Pipeline Task Force, has been able to forge strong
working relationships with the governor’s office and suggest
concrete changes (some of which have already become law)
in the selection process, and Harbin-Forte is optimistic that
these relationships and changes will lead to a shift in statistics.
The changes include disclosing aggregate data on the
ethnicity and gender of all judicial applicants, those that
make it to evaluation by the State Bar, and appointees. The
group also suggested that the governor’s office, AOC, and the
State Bar begin tracking the appointments of judges who are
LGBT or have a disability.
out to lunch and talking about how you are fitting in. Mentoring
takes place in the work. Let’s look at your work product,
let’s see how to improve it, what you are doing right, and
what we need to work on.”
More LGBT attorneys are asking for LGBT mentors, Turman
says. “I have a special obligation, and the firm supports
me in that,” Turman says. “Your firm never changes if you
back away from those obligations. Being black and gay probably
shut me out of so many things in the past. I embrace
who I am in all aspects today and use it to open doors for me
and others.”
BRENDA HARBIN-FORTE
For years, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brenda
Harbin-Forte has spoken out about the need to diversify the
bench in California. She was given that role officially when
the State Bar appointed her in March 2007 as chair of the
Council on Access and Fairness, which advises the board of
governors on diversifying the legal profession.
28 WINTER 2007

“It’s not just a pipeline issue, a numbers
issue,” says Harbin-Forte. “It’s a
process issue. We realized that while
we want to get more women and minorities
to put in applications to the
bench, they would not if they didn’t
feel they had a chance.”
The result has been a steady whittling away of minorities on
the bench. Harbin-Forte’s group collected their own statistics,
and some were glaring. Of the 1,498 superior court
judges in the state, only 262, or 17.5 percent, are ethnic minorities.
Some 46 California counties had no African American
judges on the bench at all. Of Orange County’s 109
judicial seats, ethnic minority judges held only 17. The appellate
courts fared even worse. For example, there are only
3 African American judges on the 112-justice appellate
bench, including the state Supreme Court.
Other counties had statistics more in line with the county
populations. In Alameda, for instance, where Harbin-Forte
sits, 20 percent of the judgeships are held by African
Americans; 13 percent of the county population is African
American.
The council was concerned that the selection procedure and
processes needed to be revised and, most importantly, become
more transparent. “We wanted a clearer understanding
of the methods by which judges are selected,” says
Harbin-Forte. The group also felt the members of the Commission
on Judicial Nominees Evaluation (JNE—nicknamed
the Jenny Commission) could use some training in identifying
hidden biases that may be reflected in the ratings and
comments provided by the evaluators and in the final rating
given a candidate by the JNE Commission itself.
“When I became a judge, I was very concerned about the appearance
of fairness and that people feel that, when they have
their day in court, they have been listened to, heard, and
treated fairly. I have been very active in my community, and
when I talked to numerous people on the street, they felt like
they weren’t getting a fair shake. They thought it was due to
their race or ethnicity, but that wasn’t always the case. But
they thought no one in the court system really cared about
them,” she said.
Harbin-Forte said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has
been open to the Council on Access and Fairness’s concerns
and is making a “genuine effort” to improve the diversity
of the bench. She pointed in particular to his appointment
of Sharon Majors Lewis, his judicial appointments secretary.
“She has made dramatic inroads in increasing diversity.
Judge Harbin-Forte with her collection of stuffed animals, which she presents
to newly adopted children.
Her presence, in terms of the outreach she is doing, is
just remarkable.”
“A confluence of events” is leading to possibilities of real
change, she says, including outreach activities by the ethnic
bar associations, the State Bar’s Diversity Pipeline Task Force
Report of February 2007, which highlighted the barriers and
made concrete recommendations for change, and the Summit
on Diversity in the Judiciary in June 2006, which gained
increased attention through the support of California
Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George.
Harbin-Forte said that her group found what others have
highlighted—that the “weak link” in the pipeline extends to
even the elementary school level. “We are losing children that
early,” she says.
As former dean of California’s Judicial College (she was the
first African American woman to serve in that role), and as a
frequent instructor for judicial education programs around
the state, Harbin-Forte has the opportunity to teach about
bias and fairness. “I try to teach ways they [judges on the
bench] can communicate fairness, can create an atmosphere
of fairness. I try to help educate them about the perceptions
that members of the community leave the courthouse with.”
Harbin-Forte said the judiciary is a key focal point for fairness
and diversity. “If we can’t do it right in our justice system,
then every other branch of government is at risk. The
courts are supposed to be about justice and fairness. If we
can’t achieve some ideals here, then our entire democracy is
at risk.”
All photos by Jim Block, except as noted.
THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 29