To reach a diverse pool of candidates, we attend job fairs, advertise across varied platforms, and partner with bar associations and law student groups. We have participated in the Boston Bar Association’s Annual Career Fair since its inception. And we have recently partnered with the newly formed First Generation Law Students’ Association at the University of Maine School of Law to organize programming that informs law students about law firm careers and allows them to build connections with practicing attorneys.

Through our sponsorship of the McKusick Diversity Fellowship at the University of Maine School of Law, McKusick Fellows have an opportunity for a paid internship at Pierce Atwood. Named for Vincent McKusick, a former Pierce Atwood managing partner and Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, this fellowship provides tuition and other support to students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, with a goal of increasing the diversity of the student body at the law school and in Maine’s legal community.

We also believe that to recruit, support, and retain new associates, we must offer diverse role models who can initiate and maintain rich, fulfilling mentorship relationships.

Our staff recruitment efforts also include participating in community organizations such as the Diversity Hiring Coalition of Maine and the Maine Catholic Charities Refugee Program.

Our Equity, Diversity. Inclusion & Belonging Committee works with internal stakeholders responsible for recruitment and hiring, along with internal subject matter experts within our Employment practice and HR department, to continually review our recruiting, interviewing and hiring processes to determine any areas for improvement.

Pierce Atwood is pleased to be a leader in gender diversity. In 1945, we were the first major law firm in Maine to hire a female attorney, Ms. Sigrid Tompkins. In 1953, she became the first female partner at a Maine law firm. Over the years, women have led the firm at the highest levels as Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer. Today, women serve in a variety of leadership roles across the firm, as members of the Management Committee, Practice Group Leaders, and administrative department leaders.

For many years, we have led the way in helping attorneys and their families balance the demands of their professional and personal lives by offering flexible work schedules and generous paid parental leave policies for birth and adoptive parents.

We provide opportunities for our attorneys and staff to facilitate education and conversation around diversity-related issues relevant in today’s society. For example:

• Our EDIB Committee facilitates a Media Club discussion group. We use books, movies, television shows, and podcasts as vehicles for learning more about a range of complex issues in our society, and for building internal bonds that help us tackle challenges relating to diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity with increased shared understanding.
• We hosted nationally prominent racial justice advocate DeRay Mckesson, host of the podcast “Pod Save the People,” at a firmwide lunch. His talk covered how we, as members of the legal profession, can become more aware of the impact of our behaviors and communications on racial minorities and what we can do to improve racial equity and inclusion in our communities.
• At another firmwide lunch, guest speaker Wayne Maines, father of Nicole Maines, shared with us how he worked through his own prejudices and biases to become a strong advocate for his transgender daughter and transgender rights, as well as the impact of the legal system on his family’s story. The family’s story is chronicled in the New York Times bestseller, Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt.
• The EDIB Committee has sponsored skills trainings for attorneys and administrative managers involved in the hiring process on understanding and combatting the effects of implicit bias in interviewing and hiring, and has hosted a renowned diversity expert to speak to all firm employees on implicit bias in our culture, workplace, and the media.

Pierce Atwood also supports diversity in the communities in which we live and work. For example:

• We are pleased to sponsor the McKusick Diversity Fellowship (described in greater detail above).
• In 2020, we established the Ralph I. Lancaster, Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund, in honor of our longtime partner, to help provide financial assistance to exceptional incoming University of Maine School of Law students with a demonstrated financial need.
• We are a founding sponsor, and continuing sponsor, of the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute, with four women attorneys appointed to their Leader’s Network and one on the Board of Directors. The mission of OSWLI is to teach leadership skills, and provide mentoring, to high school girls to provide them with the confidence and abilities to be future business and community leaders. Pierce Atwood attorneys and staff have served and continue to serve as advisors to OSWLI participants.
• As part of the Boston Bar Association Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Summer Fellowship Program, Pierce Atwood has sponsored internship placements at public interest law offices, such as the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
• We support the DEI efforts of NAIOP Massachusetts, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, through our contributions as a Silver Gavel Member.
• As president of the Tufts Lawyers Association, Pierce Atwood construction law partner Tom Dunn spearheaded a series of webinars discussing racial disparities in the legal profession.
• Pierce Atwood has been a sponsor of the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston; Karishma Jiva Cartwright, an attorney in our Patent group, served as vice president of this organization.
• Pierce Atwood’s Portland office hosted a CLE Ethics program "Professionalism, Conduct and the #MeToo Movement,” featuring Maine State Bar Association President Susan Driscoll and Executive Director Angela Weston discussing results of a survey sent to all Maine-licensed attorneys which explored the occurrence of harassment and discrimination among attorneys in the workplace.
• Through the DC Public School Partnership Program of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, we provide ongoing support to Anne Beers Elementary School in Washington, DC, including tutoring, mentoring, and other academic enrichment services.

• In July 2020, in response to the rising calls for structural change within our society following the killing of George Floyd, Pierce Atwood launched our Racial Justice Initiative, a three-pronged approach to promoting racial justice in our communities through targeted pro bono initiatives and transactional support.
• Each year, firm attorneys and paralegal staff are pleased to provide hundreds of hours of pro bono legal assistance in immigration and asylum cases referred by the Immigration Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP). We have represented clients from Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Haiti, Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda, and other countries where war, political instability, and violence have created extraordinary hardships. 
• We serve as local counsel to GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders) for Maine and played a central role in the successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.

Click here to learn more about the firm’s pro bono efforts.

Pierce Atwood has joined forces with various Maine law firms and corporate partners for this program that invites first-year law students from across the county to apply for a paid summer associate internship at one of the participating organizations across Maine. Click here for more information on this unique collaboration.