Ahelping hand
Norton Rose Fulbright finds sponsorship is critical to achieving more diversity
Shauna Clark remembered the isolation of being the only Black woman in the employment law practice at Norton Rose Fulbright when she told the firm’s managing partner in 2010 that he needed to meet a young Black attorney in their bankruptcy practice.
The leader said his schedulewas tight and he didn’t have the time. Clark pushed back, refusing to take “no” as the answer.
A few days later, the managing partner and Travis Torrence, a fourth-year associate at the time, met for breakfast.
“That was a critical point in my career, and Shauna arranging that meeting was sponsorship in action,” said Torrence, now a senior counsel and leader in the Shell Oil legal department. “Shauna took a direct interest in my career. She putmeandmywork on the radar of the firm’s leader, and she did so many things to help me be successful at my job.”
Torrence and Clark are exhibits one and two for Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the largest law firms in the world and the second largest operating in Texas, in making the argument that sponsorship — not to be confused withmentoring— is critical to achieve increased diversity and inclusion in an historically white male dominated legal profession.
In fact, no international corporate law firm has achieved asmuch diversity in its leadership ranks as Norton Rose Fulbright.
“It ismy impression that Norton Rose Fulbright has had greater success in both recruiting and retaining diverse talent than many other law firms,” said Phillips 66 General Counsel Paula Johnson. “I’m a firm believer that success breeds success. There is no greater tool in recruiting diverse talent than having diverse recruiting teams.”
“Diverse teams create superior re
sults, and there is no substitute for the differences in perspective that diverse teams bring to a problem,” she sai .
Corporate law firms across Texas have struggled for decades to increase the glaringly low number of women and ethnic minorities in their ranks. Most law firms, including Norton Rose Fulbright, readily admit that their prior efforts achieved minimal success.
Most large commercial law firms average between 25 percent and 40 percent of their lawyers being women and between 10 percent and 20 percent being lawyers of color, according to the American Bar Association.
Norton Rose Fulbright, which has more than 3,200 lawyers in 52 offices worldwide, reports that 33 percent of its 212 Houston lawyers are women and about 15 percent are ethnic minorities.
But leaders at Norton Rose Fulbright, which has its second- and third-largest U.S. offices in Houston and Dallas, respectively, said their older, more experienced partners’ professional sponsorship of younger women attorneys and lawyers of color is already witnessing significant successes.
The statistics seem to support this.
• Nineteen of the 27 lawyers who joined Norton Rose Fulbright in Texas straight out of law school in 2020 were women or lawyers of color.
• More than half of the summer associates at the lawfirm in 2020 were women or ethnic minorities.
• Six of the 11 associates promoted to partner in 2020 were women or attorneys of color.
• Sixteen women partners sit in significant leadership positions, ranging from practice group leaders and hiring partnership committee members to heads of the firm’s offices across the country.
• Four of the nine members of Norton Rose Fulbright’s management committee are women — one is Black, one is Asian American and one is Hispanic.
Clark, who took over as chair of the global law firm Friday and became the highest ranking African American woman to lead a top 50 international corporate law firm, said that her success as a lawyer is the direct result of sponsorship at Norton Rose Fulbright.
“My first year, I suffered from isolation from being the only one,” she said. “I thought I needed a mentor who looked like me — a Black woman. I was wrong.”
Instead, an older white employment law partner named Robert Bambace stepped forward.
“Hemademe go to blacktie events where I was the only black woman there and the youngest person there by 40 years,” Clark said. “He saw something in me. When I disappointed him, he let me know. I did not realize he was sponsoring me at the time, but now I know that I had the best sponsor. He was my secret sauce.”
Clark said that it is important to know the difference between mentoring someone and sponsoring them.
“It is so much easier to help people who are like you,” she said. “A mentor is there to coach you in life decisions. It is a comfort relationship. A sponsor is totally different. You may have nothing in common with your sponsor. A sponsor goes out of the way to help you. A sponsor, instead of taking credit for business, gives the credit to you.”
NortonRose Fulbright intellectual property law partner Gina Shishima, who sits on the firm’s management committee with Clark, calls sponsorship “the game changer” for addressing diversity.
Shishima, whose parents were born in a Japanese internment camp in California, was the first woman to
join Norton’s Rose Fulbright’s IP practice in Austin. She has a Ph.D. in molecular biology. Her sponsor was Austin partner David Parker, also a white male.
“David gave me opportunities. Hewas always my advocate. He was my champion,” she said.
Shishima and Clark agree that having four women on the firm’s management takes the pressure off them to feel as if they are the sole voice for women lawyers with other leaders.
“Women and minorities sometimes have the burden of their gender and race on our shoulders,” said Norton Rose Fulbright litigation partner Stacey Martinez, who serves on the firm’s management committee and is also its chief operating officer.
Martinez said that having four women on the management committee “paints a hopeful picture for women and ethnic minorities” about their potential future as lawyers and leaders.
“It says we are moving in the right direction,” she said. “Others can lookat the women on the management committee and see that being a woman and a minority doesn’t prevent you from leadership.”