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Diversity
Minority Report
Through a series of acquisitions, Florida-based Adorno & Yoss has become the nation's largest minority-owned law firm
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Managers at Coral Gables-based law firm Adorno & Yoss admit being baffled when potential corporate clients seeking to do business with the minority-owned firm ask them about their "diversity initiatives" or if they have a "diversity committee."
"Our whole firm is one big diversity initiative," says Francisco Gonzalez, a partner and chairman of the firm's national clients services group. "Our executive committee is our diversity committee."
So it goes at Adorno & Yoss, which has become the largest minority-owned law firm in the United States through a wave of acquisitions that began in 2004, when A&Y bought the largest Hispanic-owned firm in California. A&Y brought in $62 million in revenue last year and counts 20 Fortune 200 companies among its clients.
Gonzalez and Managing Partner George T. Yoss attribute the firm's success to an increasingly loud call from corporate counsel to diversify legal teams. (Think of a Fortune 500 firm defending a civil suit in a Miami courtroom. Hispanic lawyers might connect better with the jury and the judge.)
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With Hispanic population growth expected to account for nearly half of all U.S. population growth over the next decade, hiring lawyers who look like a company's employees, clients and community "is nothing more than a good, wise business decision," says Yoss.
But it is not an easy one to achieve. According to the Minority Law Journal's 2006 diversity scorecard, slightly more than 3% of lawyers in the nation's major firms are black; fewer than 3% are Hispanic. Even the firms that work the hardest on diversity find it difficult to hold percentages much higher than the national average. At Holland & Knight, for example, just 5% of the attorneys are Hispanic; 4% are African-American.
Recruitment is extraordinarily competitive, says Adolfo Jimenez, H&K's professional development and recruiting partner in Miami. And the larger the firm, the more difficult it is to maintain the "close, personal culture of acceptance" that keeps young minority lawyers from moving on.
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About 20% of A&Y's lawyers are Hispanic, and 15% are black. The firm's minority ownership begets more minority attorneys, including, Gonzalez says, some from larger firms who felt their talents weren't being utilized. "The vast majority of minority lawyers don't care to be tokenized," says Gonzalez. "That's an ugly word, but it still happens."
Likewise, Yoss says A&Y faces, if not outright discrimination, "still-common preconceived notions" that a minority law firm is going to be small or that it won't be able to offer the breadth and quality of a majority-owned firm.
A&Y's growth plan, the brainchild of CEO Hank Adorno in the Atlanta office, was meant to wipe out those notions. The strategy is to create a national footprint and diverse corporate practice. The firm now has 266 attorneys in 10 major metro areas. This year, the executive committee plans to decelerate acquisitions to work on building the A&Y culture in all the new offices.
Don't hire us because we're minority lawyers," says Gonzalez. "Hire us because we're good lawyers. We are good, and we happen to be minority lawyers."
