Engaging white men is imperative for any successful D&I program. In the legal profession, white men make up the majority of practitioners and almost always are the crucial decision-makers whose buy-in is necessary for substantive D&I progress. . . CLI has been fortunate to have developed relationships with many white men who are D&I allies and champions—serving on CLI’s board of directors, partnering on initiatives, and ardently advocating D&I in their law firms and law departments. Programmatically, CLI has developed several resources on how to engage white men.

Taking diversity efforts to the next level requires more compelling answers to the question of “why” diversity is essential in the practice and business of law. Those answers can be found in cutting-edge theory and research studies.

The days of the “feel good” campaigns around diversity are a thing of the past. Today, law firms of all sizes are making inclusion and retention their top priority, with an emphasis on breaking down unconscious barriers that work to derail well-intentioned diversity recruitment programs and create a revolving door for qualified but frustrated lawyers of difference.

[S]ince 2004 the legal profession has occupied the last place for retention, development and advancement among all white-color professions. It’s a major problem without a solution—until now. The cornerstone of MCCA’s new Academy on Leadership & Inclusion is the Inclusiveness Manual. The manual was developed by the Center for Inclusiveness, which is based in Denver. The next step in establishing truly inclusive workplaces is to transition from a diversity mindset to an inclusive philosophy.

The Center for Legal Inclusiveness is profiled in this national diversity publication: According to the American Bar Association, the legal profession has the least representation of racial and ethnic diversity than all professional careers. Diverse attorney attrition is another troublesome issue in the legal industry. To combat these trends in law, the Center for Legal Inclusiveness (CLI) was founded by a group of Denver-area lawyers and professors in 2007. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the CLI is taking a focused approach on working to improve the retention and advancement of diverse attorneys by helping legal organizations create more inclusive workplaces.

The Center for Legal Inclusiveness (CLI) in Denver isn’t even 5 years old, but it’s gone from identifying diversity issues in the local law community to becoming a leader nationwide in creating ways to ensure inclusiveness in the legal industry. It was an idea whose time had come. The legal sector has consistently ranked near the bottom of professions for diversity. In 2011, only CEOs ranked lower, with 10.8 percent being racially or ethnically diverse, compared with 11.1 percent of attorneys, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A Colorado nonprofit’s success in increasing inclusiveness in the legal profession has positioned it at the national forefront of what remains a serious problem within the community. The Center for Legal Inclusiveness, based in Denver, has partnered with the Washington, D.C.-based Minority Corporate Counsel Association to produce 10 training sessions across the country. The alliance is the culmination of CLI’s work for the past five years surrounding retention of diverse attorneys, a problem that had been identified through research but not yet tackled.

According to the results of the 2011 Associate Survey conducted by the Center for Legal Inclusiveness (CLI), as well as the sentiment of a June 2011 CLI focus group comprising diverse law firm partners, a key discovery was made that may shed light on why diverse attorneys leave law firms at higher rates than their non-diverse counterparts. The results found that diverse attorneys encounter hidden barriers in legal organizations that operate to exclude them from career advancement opportunities at greater rates than non-diverse attorneys. A similar conclusion has been reported in numerous national research studies.