Dear NAMWOLF friends and supporters,
First of all, and most importantly, I want to extend to you on behalf of the NAMWOLF team my thoughts for you and your family, friends and colleagues during this unprecedented and difficult disruption to your business and personal lives. I urge all of you to stay safe, healthy, and positive as we go through these next few months.
There will be many distractions in the upcoming weeks, but I want to let you know a few very important things as it relates to NAMWOLF and its mission.
NAMWOLF is and will continue to be fully operational.
Our team is working remotely and remains completely available to help our Member Firms, corporate legal groups and our valued Business Partners. Please reach out to me or anyone on my team if you have any questions. We are here to help.
Diversity and inclusion will always be important.
I encourage everyone in the legal profession to continue keeping a laser-like focus on the importance of diversity and inclusion in our industry, even as we navigate around the COVID-19 pandemic. This is critical, especially during challenging times.
Please continue to stay connected with all of the tremendous organizations focused on making our profession better. These include affinity organizations like the NBA, NAPABA and the HNBA, as well as other organizations that focus on diversity and inclusion including the MCCA, Diversity Lab, MIHCA, NGLCC, CCWC, CMCP and NAMWOLF. We at NAMWOLF will continue to be here for you, just like we always have been.
Continue demanding more diversity from your law firms, continue looking for opportunities to use minority and women owned law firms, and continue asking for more minority and women owned Tier 2 suppliers. And please continue attending our respective meetings (mostly virtual for the next several weeks), sponsoring our organizations and advocating for our causes.
It is NAMWOLF’s core belief that the best way to promote diversity and inclusion in the legal profession is to empower minority and women owned law firms. Please continue to look for opportunities to use them; you can find our outstanding firms by searching on namwolf.org, using our Solicitation Process, or by reaching out directly to me (joel_stern@namwolf.org) for guidance.
It’s critical that we continue finding opportunities for minority and women owned law firms to conduct business with corporations and governmental entities. During the Great Recession, many excellent smaller firms went out of business, including several minority and women owned law firms. Diversity and inclusion became an afterthought. Let’s learn from history and make certain we give these firms every opportunity to do business with you. They will not disappoint. Let’s not let several years of progress disappear as a result of COVID-19. Everyone loses if that happens. We each have a responsibility to ensure this does not happen.
The Annual Meeting in September is still on.
We fully expect to host our Annual Meeting and Law Firm Expo in Baltimore on September 13 – 16. In the meantime, as travel and meetings are restricted, our Practice Area Committees and Member Firms would welcome an opportunity to organize substantive CLE webinars for your legal team.
In times like these, I know that legal department budgets are under scrutiny and other priorities take precedent. However, I hope we can continue to count on your generosity and support to continue in 2020 so NAMWOLF can fulfill our important mission and keep doing what we are doing, especially during this challenging year. We have had a lot of success in the past few years, and we are determined to keep up the momentum.
The next few months will be challenging and painful, but I have so much confidence in our resilience as people. I know we will get through this.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me or anyone on the NAMWOLF team. As always, I thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you in Baltimore.
Best Regards,
Joel