team at the contest. SMART, which includes an app
and dashboard and stands for Solutions to Measure,
Advance and Reward Talent, is a gender neutral
reporting and evaluation system that aligns a firm’s
values and culture with compensation and promotion
decisions. SMART aims to reward lawyers for tasks
that have historically been non-billable, undervalued
and ironically, conducted primarily by women, such as
staffing work teams with a diverse group of individuals.
Lawyers can use the app to track their time spent on
such tasks, and supervisors can determine whether the
amount of time appropriately reflects the firm’s values.
Firms aren’t the only workplaces incorporating
ideas from the pitch contest.
This year, PepsiCo Inc. began rewarding—and holding accountable—its in-house lawyers during annual
performance reviews for their work with the company’s ongoing, outside counsel diversity program.
The idea for awarding credit to employees during
performance reviews was partly inspired from the
SMART platform, said Tony West, PepsiCo’s executive
vice president for government affairs, general counsel
and corporate secretary. West was one of the judges at
the contest. The outside counsel diversity program is
based on surveying firms for who is staffing PepsiCo
matters and who gets relationship credit. PepsiCo gives
extra points to firms with answers that include women,
minorities and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
lawyers, and directs its annual legal spend to firms that
score highest.
Ulrich Stacy said that based on news coverage of last
year’s contest, chief legal officers from several other
corporations contacted her, expressing enthusiasm
for a variety of proposals and offering to help firms
implement them. Ulrich Stacy’s group plans to support
the participating firms for another year. She envisioned
a face-to-face gathering of firms in 2018 that will focus
on sharing knowledge about how gender bias is being
disrupted since incorporating ideas from the contest.
Another popular idea presented at last year’s contest
put a twist on the traditional secondment concept. It
calls for embedding two generations of female lawyers—a partner and an associate—with a client for
a month and resuming the on-site assignment for
several days a month for 11 more months. Known as the
“Power Development Program,” this initiative encourages women to learn the client’s business, service their
matters, identify professional development opportunities and gain economic credit for the relationship. The
intent is to address the historic lack of economic power
and influence among women at firms and the all-too-common, non-strategic succession planning that results in many retiring partners transferring relationship
partner status to those who look like them—meaning,
other white men. ■
More proposals from last year’s pitch contest are detailed
at
www.diversitylab.com/hackathons.
LYDIA LUM was honored as National Journalist of the Year by the
Organization of Chinese Americans. Now a freelance writer and
editor, Lydia (
lydialum999@yahoo.com) is a former reporter for the
Houston Chronicle and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
This year, PepsiCo Inc. began
rewarding—and holding
accountable—its in-house lawyers
during annual performance
reviews for their work with the
company’s ongoing, outside
counsel diversity program.
Marching Toward GENDER EQUALITY
Tony West,
executive vice
president of
government
affairs, general
counsel and
corporate
secretary of
PepsiCo Inc.
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URT
ESY
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