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Diversity & Inclusion

We aim to foster an environment where each individual is equally accepted, valued, and empowered. To this end, we seek to learn perspectives different than our own, question our assumptions, and work to cultivate meaningful relationships with our colleagues, clients, and communities. We invest in our people, culture, and systems to create an atmosphere where all people grow and thrive.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

A diverse and inclusive workplace leads to better discussions, better decisions, and better outcomes for everyone.

At Dority & Manning, we are committed to strengthening our Firm, the legal community, and society as a whole through our diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) efforts. We acknowledge the first step towards addressing the lack of DE&I in the legal industry is to look internally at our own Firm and ensure we are fostering and maintaining a culture that aligns with our values. We advance our commitment to DE&I by first and most importantly caring for our team and creating an environment where each individual is accepted, valued, and empowered. As our Firm’s mission statement conveys, we are passionate about building exceptional relationships – amongst ourselves, with our clients, and within our communities. We start with the foundation of strong relationships and build DE&I initiatives that reflect our core values and mission.

We have developed a strategic plan that includes a strong and active DE&I Committee, as well as other internal and external resources. Our Committee is chaired by Anand K. Patel, a principal in the Firm’s Chemical & Life Sciences practice.

Dority & Manning’s DE&I Pillars

Recruiting & Retention

We seek to diversify our talent across all levels of the Firm and actively recruit candidates from historically underrepresented groups to join our Firm. We have developed and are expanding high school, undergraduate, and law school internship and scholarship programs to educate the future legal community. Through these efforts, we aim to help build a larger and more diverse talent pipeline across the entire IP industry and the legal industry as a whole.

We are committed to providing support and resources for each team member, including increasing professional development and learning opportunities focused on leadership, training, mentoring, and business acumen. We aim to enhance performance management systems to provide clear career paths, performance expectations, and clarity of required skills and competencies. We track all aspects of career growth and professional development within the Firm to ensure equitable promotions.

Internal Education

As indicated earlier, we believe addressing the lack of DE&I in the legal industry begins from within. To this end, we have developed several internal resources specifically committed to furthering our DE&I initiatives, including our DE&I Committee and supporting groups. These groups work along with DE&I consultants and leaders outside of the Firm to implement leadership and team training that supports a culture of inclusion, respect and collaboration. For example, we offer live firmwide trainings throughout the year, covering topics such as unintentional biases and microaggressions. In addition, our Firm offers access to external DE&I seminars and conferences.

Sustainability & Accountability

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are not just initiatives, numbers or buzzwords at our Firm. We want to ensure that the focus on creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment remains a top priority. Therefore, we aim to enhance integration of DE&I objectives into performance evaluations, board meetings, and other areas to provide a consistent and sustainable focus. We also participate in various external programs and surveys including the Minority Corporate Counsel Association Law Firm Diversity Survey to demonstrate our Firm’s support for diversity and collectively address the growing requests from clients who seek to better understand and benchmark firms’ quantitative and qualitative diversity, equity, and inclusion data and analysis.

 External Engagement

Dority & Manning is active in our local and global communities by participating in initiatives that raise awareness about diversification of the legal profession. An incomplete list of organizations and programs our Firm and its professionals are pleased to be a member, sponsor, or supporter of is below.

• Mansfield Rule for Midsize Law Firms Certified 
• Cardozo Patent Diversity Project
• AIPLA Women in Law Committee
• University of South Carolina’s Society of Women in the Law
• iMagine Upstate STEAM
• Hispanic Alliance STEAM Education
• National Council on Patent Practicum’s Women and Minority Scholarships
• Alpha Omega Epsilon (Women in Engineering)
• Lavender Law Career Fair
• Student Internship Programs
  • Launch Greenville Internships
  • Leadership Council on Legal Diversity 1L Scholar Program
  • Google Legal Summer Institute
  • Co-op programs with local universities
  • Various partnership programs with clients