NELA

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. May 6–10 was Well-Being in Law week. Like any good lawyer, the author of this took on more than he should have and did not write this in time to publish it that week. Living in this world is hard. Being a lawyer is hard. Being a lawyer representing people who have been sexually harassed or had their wages stolen from them is hard. It’s easy to let the difficulties of our jobs and our lives take over. Law school does not teach you how to be a lawyer. It especially does not teach […]

In the wake of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits against Major League Baseball, Fortune 100 companies, and law firms over their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, NELA reiterates its commitment to those essential values. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of NELA’s core values and essential to the achievement of our mission. When applied in unison, diversity, equity, and inclusion create meaningful representation and involvement of persons with varied backgrounds, experiences, identities, and abilities in every aspect of NELA’s work, each with the opportunity to make robust contributions to the organization without discriminatory barriers. NELA champions the culture of participation […]

Nieves Bolaños very kindly introduced me last month as NELA’s new Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I am also a co-chair of NELA’s Ethics and Sanctions Committee and Colorado Bar’s ethics committee. The rules of professional conduct and other legal and social norms purport to define “professionalism.” Smarter people than me, like Leah Goodridge and Shannon Cumberbatch, have explored how concepts of professionalism are shaped by and perpetuate racism and other oppressive ideologies.   You should read their essays:   Leah Goodridge, Professionalism as a Racial Construct, UCLA Law Review (Mar. 29, 2022): https://www.uclalawreview.org/professionalism-as-a-racial-construct/   Shannon Cumberbatch, When Your […]

As you can read on our website page, diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values of the National Employment Lawyers Association. Those values are essential to the achievement of NELA’s mission, which includes empowering workers’ rights attorneys by promoting a fair judiciary. In other words, NELA is committed to the principle that the playing field for its members, and their clients, is “level” only if the group of people who have the authority to decide on the merits of their claims – the judiciary – is, taken as a whole, “fair.” And to be “fair,” the judiciary must reflect the […]

March is Women’s History Month. Yet this March, for the first time in 50 years, those who are pregnant, in many parts of this country, have been stripped of their Constitutionally protected right to make the personal health decision to have an abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of liberty does not extend to having an abortion. Further, while those who may become pregnant are overwhelmingly women, the Court further concluded that a ban on abortion does not implicate the Equal Protection Clause. In reaching these conclusions, the Supreme […]

November’s DEI spotlight focused on the harm we can unthinkingly cause with ableist language and some suggestions on more inclusive alternatives we can add to our vocabularies. Another area in which old habits are similarly hard to break, and where it’s easy to underestimate the harm we can unintentionally cause others, is in our use of gender pronouns and other gendered terms. One way to surface how ubiquitous gendered language is in everyday speech and writing is to monitor your own speech or the speech of those you’re talking to for just five minutes and count the number of gender […]

NELA recently adopted a new Acceptable Use Policy governing the use of the NELA Exchange resources, like the Open Forum. One goal in adopting that new policy was to foster a more inclusive and welcoming environment on The NELA Exchange. Part of the new policy prohibits the use of slurs or epithets in posts, including in quotations and attachments. Members can share resources and cases quoting slurs and epithets off the Open Forum via direct emails. But because reading and hearing those slurs upsets, harms, and offends people, NELA chose to prohibit using those slurs and epithets on The Exchange. […]

As the end of summer is bringing new classes of law clerks to federal judicial chambers across the country, NELA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Committee is looking with renewed focus to the processes by which these much-sought-after positions are awarded. In particular, the Committee has been monitoring the case of Crystal Clanton, current clerk to Judge Corey Maze (N.D. Ala.) and soon-to-be clerk to Judge William Pryor (11th Circuit). As was reported in a 2017 New Yorker article, Ms. Clanton purportedly sent a colleague a text saying, “I hate Black people,” among other allegedly racist comments, while working as […]