they have arisen for public companies. I tried to find rankings of law firms by ESG scores but could not find any. Has to be coming soon.

become short hand for looking at companies, or any institution, in a way different than their stated mission. So for companies, beyond just profits. How do you interact with the environment? Do you hire women and minorities? Have you updated your personnel policies (like leave) beyond simple government mandates? Do you have a stakeholder viewpoint established in your culture?

Many companies rate companies this way and I am certain it will be coming to Big Law or Accounting, etc. if for no other reason than companies doing it impose these rules on their vendors because with whom you do business affects your rating.

This whole topic is so strange to me that I searched the internet for sample email signatures that include pronouns. I understand that some people born male identify as female and that some females identify as male. But what makes no sense to me is some individuals prefer (they/them/their) as their pronouns. What's up with that? Why would an individual person prefer plural pronouns? To me that is just bad grammar. What am I missing?

There are people who identify as neither male nor female and there is no precedent or widely accepted alternative to describe them. They/them is preferred to the only other singular pronoun: it, as that is seen to be dehumanizing.

There are numerous alternatives, but none have seen widespread adoption.

I have no problem using whatever pronouns people want, but when they start using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular human being, I agree -- that's shitty grammar.

or confusion. I too dislike They.

And it seems to make little phonetic sense in English construction. Ze would seem to be a superior choice as a subject. And having both both Zhim and Zher--or choosing either or an object noun--would defeat the purpose of gender neutrality.

zhim, zhim, and he.
zhim, Jim, and who?

correspondence to foreign clients on behalf of the partner (i.e., something usually done by the legal secretary but if my draft was only approved after 5pm or whatever I'd handle it) from which the client would reply and address me as "Ms. Tool," I don't mind this change.

And note that I have a very standard male name and my photo was readily available on the firm's website.

We also have partners who identify their pronouns.

Who is a lawyer by training, but does not practice. I honestly couldn't tell you what our Chief Diversity Officer has accomplished since she's been here.

I've not seen anyone at our firm include pronouns in an email signature, but I've certainly seen that in emails from some of the left-leaning non-profit legal services organizations we partner with on pro bono matters.

Edit: this thread made me curious, so I searched my inbox for emails from our Chief Diversity Officer, and found that she started adding her pronouns to her emails within the past month. Maybe some email blast went out to the Association of Law Firm Diversity Officer telling them to do this.

And also, is it really necessary to include "she/her/hers"? Are there people out there who identify as "he/her/theirs"?

Didn’t know what to say. “Regular male” was my response. Probably offended someone.

Students.

...to 5% of student body that really cares and out of fear by admin of potential response from 75% of student body that would want to be seen as caring if issue came up.

have their own firms than work in a big firm.

Corporate clients and governmental entities have to give a certain amount of legal work to minority owned firms. Firms like Skadden, Sidley and Austin and Dentens are never going to be considered minority owned firms, no matter how many AA partners they add.

The good AA attorneys can have their own minority owned firms, get lots of work from big companies and governments, have lower overhead and don't have to share with 200 partners.

My firm, for example, has a "strategic alliance" with a minority-owned firm in our Detroit office. Had they joined with our firm, they would've lost that status. It has been a great relationship for both firms.

I go to one or two big conferences every year for my specialty, and corporate clients are beating this drum, so law firms are coming up with all kinds of creative ways to virtue signal without actually getting any more diverse.

So far I'm not convinced it has been a positive development for the firm in stockpiling talent. Summer associates that have come through special minority 1L slots or that came from less-regarded schools in which minority status is more likely to have influenced hiring have either not gotten offers, did not last more than a year, or did not pass the bar and were not retained with surprising frequency. Although sample sizes are small, the frequencyy of this compared to non-minority hires really stands out.

Part of this could simply be failures in hiring irrespective of the advantage given to minority students. But based on the makeup of the hiring committee (and my impressions from a couple candidates that made me skeptical I would've been impressed by them in interviewing), I'm led to believe that minority status would have provided a big bump in hiring. So far we appear to have doubled down on the program to make up for the lack of quality retention issues. Maybe to hit some target numbers, I'm not sure. Hopefully the next wave will actually contribute to the firm. But I do fear there's an outsized influence on the hiring committee that is stunting the quality of hiring. I do not know what the local market pressures are, however, at similarly situated firms.

Even if we were to loosen our school standards with respect to grades and school prestige, there just aren't that many AA and Latino candidates in law school who also have undergrad degrees in EE, CS, etc.