CBA Hosts 2024 Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Summit

The Connecticut Bar Association hosted its 9th Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summit on October 25 at CT State Community College’s Gateway campus in New Haven. About 150 members of the Connecticut legal community attended the Summit to hear from distinguished speakers, who provided assessments on the state of DEI in the legal community and strategies for improving DEI initiatives within legal organizations. 

For close to a decade, the Summit has served as an opportunity for the signatory organizations to the Connecticut Legal Community Diversity & Inclusion Pledge and Plan to gather for a day of learning, reflection, and inspiration. The current Pledge and Plan provides a series of organizational diversity and inclusion action steps and best practices for each signatory organization to implement during the year.  The organizational signatories then gather at the Summit each year to review their efforts and progress, and receive education focused on the future goals of the Summit. Since the launch of the Pledge and Plan in October 2016, 46 Connecticut legal organizations, including private law firms, government legal agencies, non-profit law firms, and corporate legal departments have joined to participate in the effort. 

This year’s event began with an introduction provided CBA Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee Co-Chair Ronald J. Houde, who summarized the purpose of the Summit by stating, “We come together as advocates, colleagues, and friends united by a shared commitment to fostering a legal landscape that reflects the rich diversity of the communities that we serve.” CBA President James T. (Tim) Shearin also provided introductory remarks for the event, thanking the committee members, speakers, and attendees for their participation in the Summit and introducing the Summit’s first speaker, Judge Cecil J. Thomas.

The opening educational program of the Summit presented by Judge Thomas consisted of the annual Signatory Data Collection Overview. During this presentation, which has been given annually at the Summit since 2017, Judge Thomas provided an aggregate snapshot of the representation of diverse individuals within the signatory organizations, organized by type of employer. The data is drawn from assessment responses that the Connecticut Legal Community’s Diversity & Inclusion Pledge & Plan Signatories submit annually, in which each organization describes its structural diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts during the prior year, and shares demographic data concerning lawyers employed within the organization in Connecticut.  The presentation provided information on diversity metrics organized by gender, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability, for private, non-profit, and government legal agency pledge signatories.  Summit participants were provided insight into the representation of diverse individuals within the leadership and total attorney population of these legal sectors, trends and changes over the years of data collection in Connecticut, and comparisons to national trends as reported by the National Association of Law Placement.

The Summit’s second speaker was Dr. Arin Reeves, a researcher, author, and top advisor to leaders in companies, firms, and organizations on leadership and workplace culture topics. Dr. Reeves led attendees through an interactive workshop, The Why and the How of Diversity and Inclusion: Integrating Diversity & Inclusion Into How We Work, that explored the field of DEI with a specific focus on the concept of diversity fatigue. She began by breaking down the separate meanings of each of the constituent components of DEI and the different approaches needed to achieve success in diversity vs. equity vs. inclusion. Later in the workshop, she emphasized the importance of focusing on behavior rather than belief when seeking to implement DEI based policies within a workplace. “The minute you bring belief into the workplace you are hurting your diversity efforts, because it’s irrelevant,” stated Dr. Reeves. She stressed that by divorcing required behaviors from a belief set, proper DEI practices and policies can be implemented with less resistance from employees that disagree with their basis. 

After a break for lunch, the Summit continued with the presentation Practical DEI Suggestions for the Current Environment by Professor Kenji Yoshino of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. In the presentation, Professor Yoshino examined polarizing perspectives on the legal repercussions that Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard will have on future DEI initiatives. He identified one perspective that optimistically believes the ramifications of the case will be restricted to college admissions and therefore not affect private business practices as well as an opposing perspective that the case portends all-encompassing restrictions on any DEI programs. Professor Yoshino argued that the correct takeaway from the case falls between these two extremes. He noted that the issue of affirmative action, around which the Fair Admissions case centers, is only one of many approaches associated with DEI initiatives, which extend to also include employee education and training, heritage celebrations, family friendly policies, structured interviewing processes, and more. “What we need to really do is think about which of these practices are legally risky and which are not,” stated Professor Yoshino before providing examples of programs that would either align or conflict with contemporary interpretations of the law.

The Summit’s final presentation was presented by recently retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson, who provided reflections and lessons drawn from his experiences with DEI issues during his 24 years of service on the bench. He spoke about personal situations he encountered in his professional career where he faced prejudice and assumptions based on his racial identity. Chief Justice Robinson also spoke about his views on DEI through a historical context and the particular importance of examining difficult moments in our nation’s history. “The attempts to deny, alter, or erase history by those who are embarrassed by it, fear it, or wish to manipulate it for their own purposes is not only shortsighted but dangerous,” stated Robinson. “If they are successful then all explanations of how we got here in this moment will no longer exist; all the lessons that the past has taught us will be lost.” 

Following Chief Justice Robinson’s presentation, Judge Thomas once again took the stage to bring the Summit to a close. Judge Thomas thanked those for attending for their commitment to the Summit, noting “The goal for today was to address the challenges of the moment, to put together the speakers that we all needed to hear from, and my hope is you all leave here inspired with something to take back to your organizations.”

The Summit reflects the significant efforts of the CBA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and in particular its Summit Subcommittee, over the course of the past year.  The CBA extends its gratitude to the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Summit Committee members for organizing an engaging summit and to all our sponsors for making this year’s event possible.