Partners' Perspective: How Employee Diversity Adds Value to Law Firms

In an interview for Washington Lawyer, Finnegan's partner-in-charge of Diversity and Inclusion, Raj Gupta, discussed the firm's unique position in recruiting diverse candidates. He said:

For Finnegan, a law firm that focuses solely on intellectual property law, it poses some unique challenges in recruitment and diversity that are not faced by general-practice firms. Our ideal candidates not only have to have excellent lawyering skills but also possess a strong background in engineering and the sciences. This severely limits the talent pool, and it also offers an opportunity to be more creative in our recruiting approach, especially when identifying and hiring minorities, women, or LGBT candidates. I think the other important piece to this is that recruitment is basically the start of the process of trying to build a diverse environment. What you really need to do is sustain that diversity that we achieve through our recruitment efforts.