Barnes & Thornburg Firm Managing Partner, Andy Detherage, Pledges Commitment to Leaders at the Front Diversity Initiative

Barnes & Thornburg is pleased to announce that Andy Detherage has pledged his commitment to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity’s (LCLD) Leaders at the Front initiative. Leaders at the Front is an initiative designed to dismantle systemic barriers that prevent underrepresented attorneys from achieving the highest levels of leadership within law firms and corporate legal departments.

“At Barnes & Thornburg, we recognize the impact of leading by example,” said Detherage, the firm’s managing partner. “I’ve made these commitments to propel our organization forward, creating pathways for diverse lawyers to grow in their careers, develop successful practices, and advance in the law firm and in the practice.”

Through this initiative, LCLD asks its members to make personal commitments to DEI and implement organizational changes that are specific, meaningful and measurable. The goal is that a collective voice across the industry will create transformational change.

A few of Andy’s personal and organizational commitments are to:

• Ensure that our firmwide strategic plan fully and substantively incorporates strategies and goals that advance diversity, equity and inclusion both in terms of our talent and the growth of the firm as a whole
• Continue our efforts to include our DEI commitment in our compensation determinations in furtherance of the Diversity Lab Inclusion Blueprint’s Do Something Hard initiative
• Impose a tracking mechanism that will be shared with the Management Committee to ensure that diverse talent involved in pitches are actually engaged in resulting work opportunities and are considered for billing credit opportunities where appropriate

LCLD is one of the nation’s leading legal organizations promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and was founded to “build a legal profession that looks like the nation it serves.” To accelerate progress in this regard, LCLD recently launched its Leaders at the Front initiative, which calls upon more than 430 corporate chief legal officers and law firm managing partners to “create personal action plans, and publicly commit to them, with the goal of building a more perfect union—in our organizations, our communities, and our world.”  

With more than 800 attorneys and other legal professionals, Barnes & Thornburg is one of the largest law firms in the country. The firm serves clients worldwide from offices in Atlanta, Boston, California, Chicago, Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Philadelphia, Raleigh, South Florida, Salt Lake City, South Florida, Texas and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit us online at www.btlaw.com or on Twitter @BTLawNews.