DLA Piper receives Mansfield 5.0 Certified Plus status and commits to Mansfield 6.0 efforts

DLA Piper is pleased to announce the firm has achieved Mansfield 5.0 Certified Plus status for 2022 as a result of its implementation of the Mansfield Rule 5.0, an initiative through which participating law firms consider at least 30 percent diverse lawyers for c-suite level positions, top leadership roles, senior-level lateral hiring, partnership promotions and participation in client pitch meetings.

The Certified Plus recognition signifies that DLA Piper, in addition to considering candidate pools made up of at least 30 percent underrepresented lawyers, has also achieved actual representation of at least 30 percent women, lawyers of color, and LGBTQ+ lawyers in many of the Mansfield Rule categories.

As a signatory to the rule since 2017, DLA Piper has received Certified Plus recognition for all iterations of the rule. The firm recently committed to participating in Mansfield 6.0, the sixth iteration of the rule, which requires firms to meet 80 percent of certification criteria to achieve Certified Plus status, as well as commit to transparency around written and accessible leadership job descriptions, election/appointment guidelines, written/published compensation policies and origination credit policies.

“DLA Piper is proud to continually achieve and surpass the Mansfield certification requirements. A diverse and inclusive organization is not only important to us as a firm but is beneficial to our client relationships,” said Jackie Park, DLA Piper’s co-US managing partner. 

Named after Arabella Mansfield, the first woman admitted to practice law in the United States, the Mansfield Rule was one of the winning ideas from the 2016 Women in Law Hackathon competition hosted by Diversity Lab, in collaboration with Bloomberg Law and Stanford Law School. DLA Piper has participated in every year of the initiative. The Mansfield Rule was inspired by the NFL's highly successful Rooney Rule, named for former Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, which requires every NFL team to interview at least one minority candidate for head coach vacancies.