Recruiting the Best and Brightest

Throughout its history, Covington has sought lawyers who not only uphold our strong commitment to providing the highest quality legal representation to our clients, but also our firm belief in the importance of public service.  As an ongoing part of our efforts to recruit lawyers who share these core commitments with us, we are working to increase the numbers of lawyers from diverse backgrounds at all levels of practice.  These efforts include:

• National and School-Specific Law Student Groups.  We support minority, women, and LGBTQ+ student groups at law schools throughout the country, such as the Black Law Students Association, the Latin American Law Students Association, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, the South Asian Law Students Association, and the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association.  We not only provide financial support to these groups, we also participate in numerous other ways, including speaking on panels regarding law firm life, attending job fairs and conferences, and meeting with law students in informal settings to discuss legal careers and provide counseling on interviewing strategies.
• Washington D.C. Road Show.  We were one of the founding members of the "Road Show," established about four decades ago by the major Washington DC law firms to encourage African American law students to practice in large Washington law firms.  At Road Show presentations on law school campuses, we have discussed issues such as handling interviews, managing grades, choosing a practice area, lawyering in Washington, being an African American lawyer in a large corporate firm, and succeeding in big firms.  Michael Baxter, one of our African American partners, chairs the D.C. Road Show Committee, and for many years, has organized the Road Show for all Washington firms.
• Public Commitments.  In Washington, New York, and San Francisco, our firm has joined with other major firms in making public commitments to increase diversity in our ranks.  We are a founding member of the District of Columbia Conference on Opportunities for Minorities in the Legal Profession and an original signatory of the conference's Policy Statement Regarding Minority Hiring and Retention.  We endorse the New York City Bar Association's Statement of Goals for Increasing Minority Representation and Retention.  And we are a charter signatory of the No Glass Ceiling Initiative of the Bar Association of San Francisco.  We support a number of organizations in our communities and nationally, such as the Asian American Bar Association, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, the Asian Pacific Bar Association, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, the Hispanic National Bar Association, PFLAG, Lavender Law, the Women's National Bar Association, the National Women's Law Center, and the national partnership for Women and Families. Firm Chair Doug Gibson pledged his commitment to the Leaders at the Front initiative of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD). Leaders at the Front is designed to dismantle systemic barriers preventing underrepresented lawyers from achieving the highest levels of leadership within law firms and corporate legal departments.