Shareholders Lawrence Abbott, And Janika Polk, Discuss The Firm’s Commitment To Diversity And Mentoring In Interview With The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel is a monthly professional practice newspaper for more than 35,000 primary readers. The three editions of MCC – Northeast, Southwest and National – reach corporate counsel in the entire United States – including the general counsel and corporate law departments of Fortune 1000 companies.

Managing Director, Lawrence Abbott, and Shareholder, Janika Polk, were interviewed in the February 2007 issue of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel.  The article focuses on Abbott, Simses & Kuchler’s strong commitment to diversity and mentoring as demonstrated by the excerpt below:

Editor: The Firm has an outstanding reputation for its commitment to diversity and its culture of inclusiveness. This did not just happen. How did this come about?

Abbott: At the moment, 47 percent of our attorneys are women; 30 percent are minorities. Of our shareholders/owners, 36 percent are women and 8 percent are minorities. Notably, we do not have any special "of counsel" categories where a person is a shareholder/owner in name only. Rather, our commitment to diversity is real.

I believed in diversity when I started the Firm and have never thought that a business setting was a place for differentiation of any kind based on gender or race. Promoting diversity is simply the right thing to do.

It is also good business sense. As the Firm evolved, and we began to try cases all around the country, we realized that we were before very diverse juries. We were quick to realize long ago that having attorneys who looked like the jury pools in our cases gave us a competitive advantage.

The full text of the article can be accessed via the following link: