Companies Push Diversity Goals for Outside Law Firms

Law firms that want corporate business have an incentive to focus on their employee diversity: pleasing clients that demand it.

The legal departments at companies such as Starbucks and Northwestern Mutual are looking at diversity and inclusion within their own organizations and the outside counsel they hire. Their priorities could shift an industry that is still largely male and white.

Women are now the biggest buyers of legal services through the growing prominence of legal operations executives, said Connie Brenton, president and CEO of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, or CLOC. Brenton also is senior director of legal operations at ...