I, Joel Unruch, personally commit to the following:
Personal Commitment
- I will use my voice to advocate for inclusion and diversity in my organization and in the legal profession. I will use my platform to sponsor and amplify under-represented voices.
- I will participate in public forums and engage in discussion on best practices to drive diversity in the legal profession.
- I will continue to learn about, listen to, and welcome input from under-represented communities within and outside of my organization and be continuously open to rethinking.
- I will host an LCLD Learning Experience and have follow up conversations with at least two Fellows in attendance.
- I will nominate, and meet regularly with my organization’s Fellows, Pathfinders, and Alumni to discuss their experiences within the organization, and ask each individual to come to the meeting with learnings and ideas to share with me and my leadership team.
- I will choose at least two outside counsel firms and identify diverse young partner/senior associate(s) to be introduced in-depth to my company’s business.
- I will continue to serve as the executive sponsor for inclusion and diversity in our legal organization.
Organizational Commitment
- With Accenture’s leadership team, we will take steps to accelerate change. This includes ensuring our training, policies, practices and overall transparency around conduct reinforces our culture so that every person feels they belong, they can speak up without fear of retaliation, and they trust we will take action against discrimination or misconduct in the workplace.
- We have set the expectation that all managing directors in the legal organization have an I&D priority and we will take the achievement of I&D goals into account at the end of the performance year. This will include identifying allies and mentors within our legal organization.
- We will ensure that we are being thoughtful around work assignments so that we continue to create opportunities to develop the careers of our diverse employees.
Metrics
We have committed our legal organization to seek accreditation from the Diversity Lab for the Mansfield Rule in the US by July 2022, ensuring at least 50% diverse slates across all recruitment, promotion, advancement opportunities and for the lead lawyers at our outside counsel.
We will continue to track diversity among our outside counsel against set goals and increase it year-over-year.
We have set headcount goals for ethnicity in our legal organization in the US (including Managing Director level), UK and South Africa by 2025.
We will achieve gender balance at the Managing Director level in the legal organization globally by 2025.