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Diversity

Phelps Dunbar recognizes that diversity within our firm provides us with outstanding resources to serve our diverse and growing client base. Our multifaceted legal backgrounds, business experience and commitment to the law have contributed immensely to the firm’s recent success in business growth, client service and community participation. Phelps Dunbar is proud of its accomplishments in diversity and is committed to being the market leader among law firms throughout the country. We are dedicated to diversity at all levels throughout the firm, in our society and the communities that sustain our operations. 

Since 2002 Phelps Dunbar’s efforts to increase minority and women hiring and retention throughout the firm have been acknowledged by others. Specifically, Phelps Dunbar received the first Defense Research Institute (DRI) National Diversity Award in 2002, which recognized the firm’s outstanding diversity achievements and commitment. And, we continue to receive awards today. We have held top rankings in a national survey of minority hiring conducted by Minority Law Journal which ranked Phelps Dunbar as having the highest percentage of African American lawyers four times since 2002 and one of the top three firms in this category for the past eight years. Multicultural Law Magazine has listed Phelps Dunbar in the following diversity categories: Top 100 Law Firms for Diversity, Top 25 Law Firms for African Americans, Top 100 Law Firms for Women and Top 50 Law Firms for Partners for the last seven years.

These efforts are a credit to the work of the firm’s hiring committee, as well as contributions by the firm’s partners and associates. Our attorneys are the key factor in Phelps Dunbar’s diversity accomplishments. Collectively, they play an integral part in law firm recruiting and retention of top-level talent through community involvement and leadership roles within the firm as well as numerous professional and civic organizations. We are active and aggressive in our approach to hiring a diverse array of attorneys based on talent, accomplishments, and experience. In the same regard, Phelps Dunbar does not discriminate based upon gender, race, color, national origin, age, religion, disability or sexual orientation in hiring, promotion or any other aspect of employment.

With a commitment to strengthen diversity in the workplace, Phelps Dunbar has teamed up with the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD), an organization comprised of chief legal officers and managing partners from leading corporations and law firms around the United States. The LCLD is dedicated to making significant, tangible progress on diversity by developing specific goals, implementing measurable metrics and rewarding definitive results. The LCLD recognizes and affirms that having diverse talent is a critical element in having the best talent. To assure that the legal profession enables the best talent to flourish, the LCLD is committed to eliminate impediments, which preclude minorities and women from having a full and fair opportunity to perform, to succeed and to lead.