Orrick Herrington joins Legal Innovators to recruit diverse attorneys

A new partnership between Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and the legal service provider Legal Innovators will tackle how firms recruit diverse lawyers.

The two will collaborate on a pilot program allowing for two Legal Innovators lawyers to join Orrick's incoming class of law school graduates as fellows. A larger group of diverse lawyers will also join Orrick this year to participate in a Legal Innovators-led training program.

After their second year with the firm, the fellows may be offered full time associate positions. Bryan Parker, CEO of Legal Innovators, said in an interview that alternative legal service providers are the future.

"We can find, we can vet, we can train and mentor to set up for success, enter that talent, help people cost rationalize, and then where they need help, we will help with diversity and inclusion," Parker said.

Legal Innovators hires lawyers out of law schools while they work for law firms who could hire them in the future. The company that started in 2019 seeks to lower the costs of training lawyers while growing the number of diverse attorneys.

The company uses alternative hiring metrics to identify promising students beyond the traditional law schools from which law firms usually hire, such as accolades and work experience in undergraduate schools, to determine the potential success of a candidate.

Siobhan Handley, Orrick's chief talent officer, said the program is a way to accelerate the firm's reach and where it recruits from.

"There are extremely talented individuals that are outside of the top 25 or 30 law schools, and we know that there are many systemic barriers that prevent highly qualified, amazingly talented individuals from ending up at a Top 25 or 30 law school," Handley said.

-- Henrik Nilsson