For our inaugural year, we were pleased to select Gordon & Rees as our 2021 award recipient. Gordon & Rees has demonstrated a sustained commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in our industry through its noteworthy efforts in hiring, mentorship, and career advancement opportunities for diverse attorneys.

Gordon & Rees has worked to effectuate impactful, lasting change in the legal community by implementing several key initiatives. Among these is its Leadership Equality and Diversity Program, which supports the firm’s ongoing commitment to recruit, retain, and promote female and diverse attorneys to the highest positions of management and ownership at the firm. In addition, Gordon & Rees’ ongoing diversity and inclusion efforts have been recognized throughout the legal profession, with it being named a Top 45 U.S. firm on the American Lawyer Diversity Scorecard, a Top 25 U.S. firm on the National Law Journal Women in Law Scorecard, and achieving a perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index, a national benchmarking survey and report on corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ workplace equality administered by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, for six consecutive years.

The firm’s diversity efforts extend to its practice groups, of which the Fidelity Practice Group is noteworthy. Leading these efforts, Scott Schmookler has fostered diversity and inclusion through actively identifying opportunities to promote junior members of his team for speaking and writing engagements and providing opportunities for diverse attorneys to advance their careers and skill sets. Over the past seven years, Scott has worked to foster diversity and inclusion in our industry by actively recruiting and hiring eight diverse attorneys to specialize in fidelity coverage and litigation.

Working to develop their careers, he has provided them opportunities to participate in client development; to create and develop their own marketing plans and opportunities (through publishing on fidelity subjects and speaking engagements); to take leadership roles in high profile cases; and to mentor younger associates. As a member of Gordon & Rees’ senior management, he has ensured diverse attorneys are promoted within the firm’s management structure, successfully advancing three diverse attorneys to the firm’s partnership within the last two years.