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The Gender Diversity Committee’s (GDC) mission is ensuring the Firm provides a work environment that fosters and enhances the recruitment, retention, and career development of women so that women can reach their full potential.
Current Goals and Achievements
Opt-In Project: Through its Gender Diversity Committee, Heller Ehrman has initiated a nationwide effort to address the reported phenomenon of women obtaining the highest levels of education, entering the workforce in record numbers, and then choosing to “opt out” of their professional careers. We created the firmwide Opt-In Project, addressing the retention and promotion of women within business and legal communities. Heller Ehrman is conducting a series of roundtable discussions and lectures with leaders from different professions to create and identify best practices for increasing the number of women in roles of leadership. For More information visit The Opt-In Project website.
Training, Mentoring, and Career Development: The Gender Diversity Committee sponsors internal training sessions on issues that relate to gender diversity. A recent session featured mixed gender mentoring relationships that were successful, with both the mentor and the mentee sharing why they think the relationship worked and imparting best practices in mentoring. Other training sessions have focused on business development by women, work-life balance, and other issues of particular importance to the development of the careers of our women attorneys. The Committee also works with management to ensure that we follow the best practices with respect to the career development and promotion of associates, with a focus on those practices that may have a particular impact on female attorneys.
Assuring that Heller Ehrman has policies concerning parenting leave, maternity leave, and part-time schedules that are consistent with our goals of retaining and developing successful women attorneys: Heller Ehrman has long had in place both maternity leave and parenting leave policies to provide support for our attorneys who are welcoming children into their families. The firm also permits part-time schedules and has a number of attorneys working on a part-time basis. We are committed to continually improving these policies, and the Gender Diversity Committee provides input to management on best practices in these areas. Our goal is to allow attorneys to balance their commitments at home with the demands of a top-notch legal practice.
No Glass Ceiling Task Force: Heller Ehrman was recognized in 2005 by San Francisco’s No Glass Ceiling Task Force for our achievement in being one of several firms having the most women in management and women partners out of all of the 76 signatory law firms and legal departments. The Task Force recently encouraged firms to reach for even higher benchmarks, and Heller Ehrman has committed to hit those goals by the target date of January 2010.
Community Outreach: The Gender Diversity Committee also supports a variety of outreach efforts by our attorneys, including a number of events at law school focused on encouraging women to consider a career in the private practice of law. Several of our attorneys in Seattle have been involved in the foundation of a local bar organization for mother attorneys. Many of our lawyers are involved in pro bono legal work in furtherance of the legal rights of women and in particular underprivileged women.
