Bright Spot: Chapman and Cutler’s Virtual Coffee Chats
In an effort to inform and inspire our members and friends, we often share diversity and flexibility Bright Spots – those small or large successes that impact an organization in a positive way. We believe that important diversity and flexibility initiatives can truly impact your organization’s bottom line, recruitment and retention capabilities and employee satisfaction.
BRIGHT SPOT – Chapman and Cutler – Virtual Coffee Chats
During the COVID -19 pandemic, many professionals have voiced concerns about the lack of “water cooler moments” with everyone working from home. In particular, some new Associates have found it difficult to network and find firm mentors while working remotely. The Talent Development office at law firm, Chapman and Cutler, came up with a creative, yet simple, solution to this new challenge. By creating a system for Virtual Coffee Chats, Chapman has been able to connect younger Associates with more senior colleagues for casual networking coffees.
The goal of the system was to make it easy for senior Partners to connect with First Year and Summer Associates for a 20-30 minute one-on-one Zoom call. The Zoom scheduling links were created to automatically schedule the coffees and add them to individual calendars. Therefore, no one was overburdened with scheduling the calls and the time commitment was minimal.
As an added incentive the Talent Development Office sent specialty coffees and teas – all provided by black or minority-owned businesses – to encourage participants and create a fun environment. This small incentive provided a very positive impact to firm culture.
IMPACT
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and many Partners and Associates plan to continue these virtual coffees long after the pandemic. Associates have really enjoyed meeting the Senior Partners and learning about best practices and new client projects.
Bright Spot: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Billable Hours
In an effort to inform and inspire our members and friends, we often share diversity and flexibility Bright Spots – those small or large successes that impact an organization in a positive way. We believe that important diversity and flexibility initiatives can truly impact your organization’s bottom line, recruitment and retention capabilities and employee satisfaction.
BRIGHT SPOT – Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Billable Hours
Recent Bright Spots in the legal community are new Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Hours Policies implemented by several law firms in which employees can accrue billable hours towards their annual target by participating in efforts that advance DE&I.
Some examples of projects that may qualify for DE&I billable hours include:
IMPACT
We are happy to report that we’ve seen a very positive Ripple Effect to these new policies and many firms are now jumping on the DE&I billable hours bandwagon. Examples of firms that have instituted a DE&I billable hours policy include (but are not limited to): Ogletree Deakins, Davis Wright Tremaine, Cooley and Hogan Lovells, as well as one of the early pioneers of this trend Dorsey & Whitney who implemented their policy in 2019.
It’s important to note that Reed Smith seems to be one of the first firms to extend their policy to its business professionals.