Lowenstein Chair and Managing Partner Gary M. Wingens and Bankruptcy & Restructuring Department associate Arielle B. Adler participate in this presentation hosted by the LGBT Rights Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association.
Program description:
Increasing representation and promoting inclusivity in our workplaces (whether virtual or physical) are starting points in building workplace cultures and employing operational structures that are rooted in empowering legal professionals rather than simply managing them. But there are more tools and opportunities to eliminate the effects of implicit and structural biases once workplaces become more diverse and inclusive.
An organization must examine its procedures and processes to identify where biased decision-making may impede professionals’ development and ability to succeed in order to develop a strategic plan to counteract it. But even the well-developed plan cannot meaningfully improve workplace culture unless the individuals who comprise that workplace have the tools to participate in creating and sustaining that change and fostering bias-free environments that promote belonging. As individuals in professional legal spaces, then, how do we become competent in the work of eliminating bias? What are our obligations? What are our individual diversity deficits? How do we own our implicit bias and develop checks to avoid implementing it? And how do our favorable assumptions in professional contexts maintain the uneven playing field, perhaps even more than unfavorable ones do?
This program, which offers Ethics/Professionalism credits and satisfies the new Diversity, Inclusion, and Elimination of Bias credit requirement, will engage the panelists and attendees in the personal work of eliminating bias that is critical to dismantling organizational and structural workplace dynamics that unintentionally yet materially delay, inhibit, or even preclude authentic diversity, inclusion, and belonging in legal workspaces.
Moderator/Speaker:
- Arielle B. Adler, Associate, Bankruptcy & Restructuring Department, Lowenstein Sandler LLP
Speakers include:
- Gary M. Wingens, Chair and Managing Partner, Lowenstein Sandler LLP
- Lisa R. Burke, Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement Program Coordinator, New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts
- Sylvia-Rebecca Gutiérrez, Associate, Gibbons PC
- Emily A. Kaller, Partner, Greenbaum Rowe Smith & Davis LLP
- Rippi K. Karda, Associate General Counsel, Verizon Communications Inc.
- James A. Lewis, V, Partner, Chasan Lamparello Mallon & Cappuzzo, PC
- Cheyne R. Scott, Partner, Chasan Lamparello Mallon & Cappuzzo PC
