The HCBA Diversity and Inclusion Committee works to improve diversity in the legal profession. The committee focuses its work on retaining lawyers with diverse backgrounds, building a diversity pipeline to the legal profession, and informing the broader legal community about issues surrounding diversity and inclusion.
Below are some of the initiatives the committee is currently working on, or has worked on:
Diversity Pipeline: The Diversity Pipeline work group is a subcommittee of the HCBA Diversity Committee. The group works with community partners, such as Achieve Minneapolis and the Minnesota Urban Debate League, to proactively create the next generation of attorneys. By collaborating with local firms, nonprofits, and law schools, we look forward to building a coordinated, collective approach to educating youth from underrepresented backgrounds about legal careers. The group also advises Achieve Minneapolis on creating law-related youth programming.
Lawyer Statistics: The Lawyer Statistics subcommittee has worked with the Humphrey school to study where the diversity pipeline breaks down in the Twin Cities legal market. The group is also working with the state bar to support mandated reporting of ethnicity at time of bar licensing and has developed recommendations for law schools to collect ethnicity data consistently
CLE/Diversity Programming: The CLE/Diversity Programming subcommittee develops continuing legal education courses on diversity-related topics that range from elimination of bias courses to diversity topics in specific practice areas.
Diversity Scholarship: The Ramsey County Bar Foundation and Hennepin County Bar Foundation will award various scholarship funds to law students who attend a Minnesota law school and who are a member of a group(s) traditionally under-represented and/or marginalized in the legal profession.
Staff Liaison
Erikka Ryan | 612-278-6321