The Law Firm as Social Institution

 The global values revolution has reached beyond corporations and non-profits to the law firm.

DAVIS POLK TODAY, BEFORE THAT MAYER BROWN

Today, the Asia chairperson of Davis Polk Martin Rogers didn't speak, as originally scheduled, at a Hong Kong forum on the national security law. As the Hong Kong Free Press reports, the law firm had been hammered for planning to participate in what was perceived as supporting a violation of human rights.

Earlier, Mayer Brown also had been a target of global censure for representing Hong Kong University in its initiative to remove the Tiananmen Square memorial. It went through the wringer.

A MAJOR MEDIA STORY

So, it's no surprise that what lawyers at major law firms are doing for social justice is receiving sustained media attention.

An example are the partners and chairperson at Paul Weiss.

LORETTA LYNCH AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT

As Reuters Legal reports, in delivering the commencement speech at Harvard Law School, Paul Weiss partner Loretta hit hard the meme that the graduates should "work to save us from this darkness." It was the day after the massacre of children through firearms in Texas. So there was no ambiguity in Lynch's address that guns are part of that darkness. That role of savior, Lynch specified, entails "discomfort." Explicitly she stated:

"Discomfort is not the enemy. Discomfort is the spur towards change." 

Lynch is a woman of color. 

TED WELLS JR. IN FORBES

On the second anniversary of George Floyd's death, Forbes featured the observations of Paul Weiss' co-head of litigation. Ted Wells Jr., a man of color, gave the message that outrage can lead to change. The massacre in Buffalo, New York had recently gone down. He said:

"I was born in 1950 and came of age during the civil rights movement. If somebody had told me at 18 we would still be fighting in 2022 with such intensity about violence against Black men and women, I am not sure that I would have believed it."

Wells has been chairman emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

BRAD KARP FEATURED IN PIVOT PODCAST, BLOOMBERG LAW

And, it is a sign of these times when law firms are expected to be on the front lines of the values struggle that this happened: Jeffrey Sonnenfeld from Yale Management School included law firm Paul Weiss in a discussion of business' impact on society. That was when Sonnenfeld was a guest on the high-profile PIVOT podcast, hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

Sonnenfeld recognized Paul Weiss chairperson Brad Karp as a "change agent." Not so along it might not have occurred to even an inventive thinker like Sonnenfeld to reach into the law-firm sector to identify a change agent. 

Interestingly, it had been Karp who projected in a Bloomberg Law interview that law firms themselves would become pulled into the ESG values issues which consumed their clients. Explicitly Karp noted:

"ESG is going to affect every aspect of the law firm world, law firm operations, and the interaction with their clients going forward. The law firm community hasn't picked up on how profound that will be."

That is exactly what played out at Mayer Brown with its Hong Kong University client. 

LAW FIRM AS SOCIAL INSTITUTION

Like business, the university, and the church, law firms are increasingly expected to conduct themselves as social institutions. That imposes a new kind of accountability. And that's that. If law firms don't embrace that there will be myriad more Davis Polks.

Connect with Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com. Now and then she does freelance communications assignments for law firms such as Paul Weiss.