Unconscious Bias In The Workplace

Unconscious bias in the legal industry may affect recruiting, work assignments, pitch opportunities, and selection of outside counsel as well as staff for internal projects. Before it can be eliminated, unconscious bias must first be recognized. In this Today’s General Counsel article, attorney Yvette Gatling discusses how to do that and then suggests some strategies for confronting it once it is recognized. Among those strategies are the application of “The Mansfield Rule.” This is a tool for measuring “whether law firms have affirmatively considered women and minority lawyers for at least 30 percent of the candidate pool for promotions, senior level hiring, and significant leadership roles in the firm.” AI, which in other contexts has been seen as an instrument that promotes unconscious bias, can also play a part in a good effort to eliminate it.