Faegre Drinker Recognized as a Top Law Firm for Women

Faegre Drinker is proud to announce that it has been ranked as one of 48 U.S. law firms to receive Gold Standard Certification by the Women in Law Empowerment Forum (WILEF) in 2020. This designation recognizes firms with women in top leadership roles who impact firm management and compensation decisions.

WILEF invited firms with 300 or more practicing lawyers in the U.S. to apply for the certification. The designation is based solely on statistical data of women lawyers in leadership and highly compensated positions, and not on the firm's internal diversity policies.

To be certified, firms must ensure 20% of U.S. equity partners, or alternatively, one-third of attorneys who became U.S. equity partners within the previous 12 months, are women and meet at least three of the following five criteria:

• 15% of the heads of the firm and its U.S. branch office heads combined are women
• 20% of the members of the firm’s primary governance committee are women
• 20% of the members of the committee that determines equity partner compensation are women
• 15% of the top half of U.S. equity partners in terms of compensation are women
• 10% of U.S. women equity partners are women of color and/or 4% of them are LGBT

WILEF launched the Gold Standard Certification initiative as a change agent for women to rise within their law firms as business developers and leaders. The organization seeks to create a dialogue for the purpose of educating women in law firms on how to become leaders in the workplace and in the community by building, exercising and implementing a strong sense of empowerment.

Faegre Drinker holds itself accountable for progress on building a diverse workforce and relies on national benchmarking surveys like the WILEF Gold Standard Certification, among others. Faegre Drinker is also proud to be recognized by Diversity Lab as a Mansfield Certified Plus firm – one of the “trailblazing law firms” that demonstrated meaningful progress in creating diverse leadership teams and developing diverse pipelines to leadership.