Deans' Diversity: Increasing Diversity in the Legal Profession

The Deans’ Diversity Council is a joint effort with the CU and DU law schools and the Front Range legal community to promote diversity in law school admissions and in hiring, retention, and advancement of lawyers in corporations and law firms.

Formed by Deans Getches and José R. (Beto) Juárez (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), this landmark diversity initiative involves the commitment and active support of the managing partners of nearly all of Denver's most prominent firms, members of the state and federal judiciary, the U.S. Attorney for the State of Colorado, and the Colorado Attorney General. 

The Deans’ Diversity Council is a joint effort with the CU and DU law schools and the Front Range legal community to promote in law school admissions and in hiring, retention, and advancement of lawyers in corporations and law firms.Formed by and (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), this landmark diversity initiative involves the commitment and active support of the managing partners of nearly all of , members of the state and federal judiciary, the U.S. Attorney for the State of Colorado, and the Colorado Attorney General. 

In response to stagnant employment rates of minority attorneys in private law firms since 1999, over one hundred Fortune 500 corporations signed the “Call to Action,” requiring law firms to increase their efforts to recruit and retain diverse attorneys or risk losing the signatory corporations as clients. As a result, the demand for diverse law students and lawyers in the private sector has risen, but the number of law school minority applications is in decline and attrition among minority attorneys at private law firms is accelerating.

Since the initial meeting last November, the Council asserted a Vision Statement with the following goal:
By the year 2016, all Denver metro law firms and corporate legal departments will have successfully developed and implemented initiatives that create cultures of inclusion where attorneys of all backgrounds succeed without regard to gender, race, religion, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation.

In 2007, in partnership with the Colorado Pledge to Diversity, the Council will conduct the first comprehensive demographic and ethnographic survey of the Colorado legal profession to provide the baseline data against which the Council will measure its future initiatives. Then, in September, the Council, in conjunction with Colorado and Denver Bar Associations’ Diversity in the Legal Profession Committee, will host the Rocky Mountain Diversity Legal Summit--the first Colorado-based national diversity legal summit.