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Jeny Maier
What’s one of the best ways for legislation companies to retain and recruit legal professional expertise? Maybe the secret is to indicate legal professionals by range, fairness, and inclusion programming that they’re actually valued for who they’re, regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation. A legislation agency with a welcoming tradition can obtain this stuff and extra — and it may turn into a launching pad to show your agency right into a “vacation spot” for legal professional expertise. Isn’t it about time to your legislation agency to begin?
I lately had the pleasure of chatting with Jeny Maier, who was lately named managing associate of Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider, the most important antitrust boutique agency within the nation, to get her ideas on the matter. Here’s a write-up of our vigorous dialog on the significance of inclusive tradition and variety inside the authorized career.
Staci Zaretsky (SZ): Congratulations in your promotion to managing associate! It should be very thrilling to be on the high of your sport in antitrust, which is such a male-dominated apply space. How does it really feel?
Jeny Maier (JM): It feels nice. And sure, the truth that I’m a girl occupying roles traditionally held primarily by males makes this a particular second for me and, I hope, others. I’m honored to be the primary feminine managing associate at Axinn, and I recognize the significance of serving as that groundbreaker.
In fact, as you word, any girl in antitrust (amongst different areas of legislation and life) has labored in an business with a gender imbalance. Nonetheless, that has modified notably over my 20-year profession. Axinn, specifically, has been an exquisite setting wherein to apply as a girl associate. There’s a formidable group of girls leaders within the Axinn antitrust apply — together with Rachel Adcox, Lisl Dunlop, Leslie Overton, Denise Plunkett, and Tiffany Rider — who discover it invigorating to work collectively. The corporate and friendship inside that group is as beneficial because the very actual enterprise improvement alternatives that we recurrently share with one another.
Likewise, the variety of feminine legislation agency leaders is rising, too. Actually, there are materially extra as we speak than once I was developing as a lawyer. I sit up for collaborating with them and studying from them. For my very own half, I hope to indicate different ladies legal professionals that you could be a frontrunner whereas nonetheless serving your shoppers, having a household and life outdoors the workplace, and remaining true to your character.
SZ: I do know that you’re working arduous to attain Mansfield certification for the agency. (Mansfield Certification is a science-backed and data-driven answer designed to assist enhance inclusivity, entry, and variety in management at legislation companies and authorized departments.) Might you please inform me a bit extra about that?
JM: We’re very actively working alongside our path towards Mansfield certification. I’ve been the associate champion of that effort for just a few causes. Mansfield certification after all communicates to the market {that a} agency locations a precedence on range, fairness, and inclusion. That’s an necessary operate — we would like our values identified by shoppers, potential hires, and others. However the effort that goes into the Mansfield certification course of doesn’t simply go towards getting a badge. The method focuses the agency on residing out these values. It requires us to undertake finest practices to assist be sure that, in terms of C-suite or management roles, pitches, promotions, and open lawyer positions, we’re inclusively giving consideration to candidates who benefit it, and never overlooking expertise.
These are all issues we wish to be doing for their very own sake. The Mansfield certification course of is a device that concentrates our consideration on making course of enhancements internally, whereas additionally permitting us to validate them externally.
SZ: In what different methods are you making an attempt to diversify your agency for the higher?
JM: I’m not saying something revelatory, however I agree with others who’ve made the purpose that making progress on range, fairness, and inclusion requires legislation companies to stay acutely aware of and intentional about these objectives in every thing they do, from summer time affiliate applications to billing practices. We’re taking quite a lot of particular actions, each large and small. One instance is that we provide as much as 50 hours of billable credit score for participation in DEI-related initiatives. We additionally lately launched quite a lot of worker useful resource teams, that are open to each attorneys and workers, and to members of underrepresented teams and allies.
There’s yet one more avenue to supporting DEI at legislation companies that maybe is ignored, and which Axinn is especially robust on: investing in our associates, since they’re the way forward for the agency. We eagerly assist our associates in pursuing talking alternatives, writing alternatives, convention attendance, bar affiliation actions, and different methods of constructing their particular person profiles inside and out of doors the agency, and increasing their skilled networks. At a better stage, we’re going to be specializing in defining our agency tradition and model in a approach that underscores our dedication to DEI.
We’re happy with the progress our agency has already made. Roughly 43% of our associates are from underrepresented racial and/or ethnic teams and/or are LGBTQ+. Greater than 65% of our associates are from such underrepresented teams and/or are ladies. Roughly 16% of our companions are from racially or ethnically underrepresented teams. However we’re removed from content material with that established order, and perceive that supporting range, fairness, and inclusion is a challenge with no stopping level.
SZ: In a current interview, you stated that you simply needed to proceed to construct on the agency’s model, and that you simply needed to make Axinn a “vacation spot” for expertise. How do you propose on doing that?
JM: In numerous methods, we wish to preserve doing what we’re doing — however do a greater job of telling folks about it.
Axinn is an unbelievable place to begin and develop your profession. Exhibit A for that assertion goes again to what I stated earlier about our willingness to spend money on our associates. At Axinn, associates are actually inspired to interact in enterprise improvement and advertising and marketing actions from their early years, and are properly supported in doing so. As well as, we’re making it simpler for our legal professionals (associates and companions alike) to indicate that they’re thought leaders of their area. We’ve got invested in enhancing our advertising and marketing applied sciences to extra successfully allow our legal professionals to create related and beneficial content material for our shoppers to eat. We’ve got no invisible associates — we would like them on the market, in entrance of shoppers on our issues, in entrance of potential shoppers at conferences and bar affiliation occasions, talking, writing, and displaying the world how spectacular they’re.
As a result of we make investments a lot so early in our associates, we’re targeted on creating their expertise and retaining them. That perception in natural development will not be going to vary at Axinn. We will definitely look to make strategic hires of skilled legal professionals to fill consumer wants, however we’ve got had an excessive amount of success with our strategy to desert it. And admittedly, as we speak it distinguishes us from the vast majority of companies that depend on lateral hiring to gasoline their development.
If we’ve got one, our largest failing on this entrance is that we’re nonetheless one of many career’s best-kept secrets and techniques. Take into account this interview one step towards altering that.
On behalf of everybody right here at Above the Legislation, we’d wish to thank Jeny Maier of Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider for taking the time to assist reply some urgent questions on how legislation companies can diversify themselves for the higher, and within the course of turn into extremely desired locations to work.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Legislation, the place she’s labored since 2011. She’d love to listen to from you, so please be happy to email her with any ideas, questions, feedback, or critiques. You’ll be able to observe her on Twitter and Threads or join along with her on LinkedIn.
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