Page 4 - First-Year Associates Handbook

S4 | TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014 | First-Year Associates Handbook
| NYLJ.COM

Diversity

Lean In, But Don’t Blend In

BY ALLEGRA J. LAWRENCE-HARDY

As a young lawyer, it was hard not to

notice that I was often the only person
in the room who looked like me. That
was a problem. Nothing in my experience told
me that differences got rewarded.
My experience did tell me that I was
responsible for projecting success. So, not
surprisingly, I set out to blend in, to conform
enough so that no one would notice that I
was different.

This became a mission-critical task. I
started with clothes. I bought so many gray
pinstripes that I had to mark my closet hang-
ers with days of the week to avoid wearing
any of these indistinguishable garments more
than once every 10 days.
I tried to get interested in sports. That
meant primarily football and reading the
sports pages religiously, even though sports

interested me even less than pinstriped suits.
I confess that I actually once volunteered that
a Georgia defense should have blitzed more
often.
I may have been right about that blitzing
strategy, but it would have been luck. You
know what follows. Years in the trenches of
law and life taught me that luck wouldn’t carry

me and that metamorphic ability is not one
of my strong suits.
So, I accepted this truth: Pinstripes are
not who I am.
And that’s not only okay—it’s irrelevant.
It’s irrelevant in my personal life but equal-
ly in my professional efforts. Clients hire me
because of the lawyer I am. It is not because I
went to Yale Law. It is not because I clerked for

an Eleventh Circuit judge. It is because—and
I have to keep working and improving on this
every day—I have unique skills (not because
I am smarter than anyone else, but because I
work as hard or harder than anyone else). It’s K
because I care about people; lawyers often TOC
forget that clients are people too. It’s because IGS
I can relate to people who are different from B
me. It’s because I listen. It’s because I don’t

always have to be right.
mentors and colleagues, and they don’t have Lawrence and you graduated from Yale,” and I’m not a blend-in kind of a person in any set-
I acknowledge, or rather believe, that being to be women of color to help me.
he went on to mention several other things ting, and I decided to embrace who I am and
a woman of color is a great start towards That’s a good thing, because, at least in he knew about me.
make the most of my strengths.
developing these attributes. But the impor- BigLaw, there aren’t that many women of color And it dawned on me. Of course he knows After that elevator ride, I recalled the
tant fact is not that I am a woman of color; in positions to lead and mentor and inlu- me. I’m the only woman of color associate advice I had received when I was a law clerk
it is that I am developing these attributes. I ence. As a baby associate at my BigLaw irm, at the law irm!
for Judge Susan Black of the U.S. Circuit Court
couldn’t do so without great teachers and
I found myself on the elevator one Saturday My epiphany was to recognize that I’m of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. I was con-
morning with the managing partner. I had never going to be anonymous. Some might sidering several offers from law irms, and I

never met him and as the elevator climbed regard that reality as a burden because that asked Judge Black for advice. I explained to
ALLEGRA J. LAWRENCE-HARDY is a partner at Suther- with just the two of us, I struggled to summon means when mistakes happen, as they inevi- her that at all the law irms I was considering, I
land Asbill & Brennan, where she is a member of the the courage to say something to him. Finally, tably will, they will not go unnoticed. Burden was likely to be the only woman of color asso-
irm’s executive committee and the co-head of the as we passed the 15th loor, I turned to him or not, the reality has to be dealt with, and I ciate (This conversation was in 1997, when
business and commercial litigation team and the and introduced myself. He was gracious, and decided to use visibility as an opportunity. law irms were considerably less diverse than
labor and employment team.
said, “Of course I know you. You’re Allegra
My personality probably left me little choice:
they are today.) She nodded, and said, “Well,