Recruiting Women and Minority Attorneys

We have embarked on a recruiting strategy designed to increase the hiring of women and minority attorneys at the partner and senior associate levels, while continuing our focus on minority candidates in all staff roles. Warner Norcross & Judd has strong relationships with minority organizations on the law school campuses where we recruit, which is important to our ongoing search for minority law school graduates and summer clerk candidates. We also participate in minority job fairs.

For the last seven years, Warner Norcross & Judd has sponsored a scholarship program that annually offers scholarships to outstanding minority students who are pursuing careers as lawyers or paralegals. To date we have awarded 11 scholarships to Michigan students. One recipient was recently recognized by Michigan Lawyers Weekly as one of the top ten lawyers in Michigan.

The Firm recently introduced its LSAT Preparation Course Scholarship program. Each year Warner Norcross will award scholarships to attend a Kaplan LSAT preparation course to five minority college students in their junior year. The scholarship will enable minority students who have an interest in attending law school to be well prepared to take the Law School Admissions Test.

Click here for information about our Minority Scholarship Programs.

In 1991, the Firm was a founding member of the Minority Clerkship Program of the Grand Rapids Bar Association. This program places minority law students with participating firms for a summer clerkship after their first year of law school, when clerkships are difficult to obtain. The Firm has extended an offer to join the Firm as an associate to a number of people who participated in this program.

Our strengthened focus on hiring women and minorities is yielding positive results. We recently recruited to the Firm an African-American lawyer with 11 years' experience as a commercial lawyer at two Fortune 500 corporations. We also recruited an accomplished woman corporate lawyer to join us as a partner in our Business Practice Group. Nearly half (48%) of the Firm's associates are female attorneys. Seven and 1/3 percent of our attorneys are members of a minority group. Twenty-four percent of our attorneys are female. Over 60% of the new lawyers who joined us directly from law school in 2007 are women, and 36% are minorities. While we have made good progress in this area, we are committed to an increasing rate of growth in the number of minorities and women at the Firm and helping them to develop successful careers.

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