Legal News

Wal-Mart Pushes (Shoves?) Law Firms to Promote Minority Lawyers

By Nathan Koppel

The Supreme Court is due next week to consider whether potentially hundreds of thousands of women can band together to sue Wal-Mart for alleged sex discrimination.

As that class action nears its high court debut, the Daily Journal in California explores the retail giant’s diversity record in another arena: its relationship with outside counsel.

Wal-Mart has issued various requests to firms in recent years that they hire and retain more women and minority lawyers, but the company recently took a more controversial step: insisting that it have a say in deciding which firm lawyers get origination credit for Wal-Mart work.

The initiative, the Daily Journal reports (link unavailable), is designed to ensure that firms not only retain more minorities but also that they ensure that minorities are designated as key client contacts.

Some firms, the Journal reports, are not pleased that Wal-Mart is meddling in internal decisions about who gets client credit.

“Firms have always thought of their own firm’s credit allocation system as internal,” Trenton H. Norris, head of Arnold & Porter’s San Francisco office, told the Daily Journal. “Wal-Mart’s position is laudable in trying to do something concrete to promote diversity in the profession, but the resistance to it is understandable.”

But Veta Richardson, incoming president and CEO of the Association of Corporate Counsel, said that  Wal-Mart’s control of origination credit is a “forward-thinking, progressive step.”

“We don’t have enough evidence yet to see what this will do,” added Marci Rubin, executive director of the California Minority Counsel Program. “It will make a difference in credit, that’s clear. Whether or not that translates into clout and seriously into power within the firm – that’s an issue to be seen.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 23, 2011 (boomark / email).