Talent Management and Development

Attracting top talent is an issue all top firms face. To stay ahead of this important issue, the heads of our talent acquisition and talent management teams serve on our Diversity Council and work with other firm leaders to ensure we attract, develop and promote diverse teams. We work hard to recruit the best and offer various programs depending on career stage.

Recruit
When hiring new staff or attorneys, we seek the best and the brightest candidates who will become active contributors to our firm’s success—regardless of their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, citizenship, marital status, gender identity, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other status as defined and protected by applicable law.

Each year since 2013, we have provided tuition scholarships to select 1L and 2L law students who demonstrate a commitment to promoting diversity and contributing to the firm’s diversity goals, and who receive an offer to join Paul Hastings in one of our U.S. offices.

Since 2011, we’ve participated in the Ron Brown Scholar Program, which attracts high-achieving pre-law students from under-represented backgrounds to study and practice law. Through this program, we provide students with two paid summer internship positions annually, which enable the students to work with our summer associates and have exposure to life in BigLaw.

The firm also supports a multitude of diverse law student organizations that aim to bring diverse students and attorneys together to network, discuss issues, learn important skills, and create mentor relationships. These programs not only benefit students, but also provide enhanced leadership skills for our attorneys. For our target schools, we participate in more focused efforts via our larger sponsorships, a sampling of which include:

• Berkeley Law Students of African Descent
• Columbia, Harvard, Stanford Black Law Students (BLSA)
• Northwestern Law Diversity Coalition
• NYU Latinx Law Students (LaLSA)
• Georgetown Asia Pacific American Law Students (APALSA)
• Lavender Law
• Columbia Law OutLaws
• Penn Law Women’s Association

For more information on our recruiting efforts or to find out how to apply to join our team, please visit our Careers page.

Develop
For our current attorneys and staff, we offer a variety of professional and business development programs to ensure that our people have the tools needed to succeed at the firm and in the legal industry at large. Some examples include:

- Black PHAN In-person Meeting: each year, for our attorney and senior staff members of the Black Paul Hastings Affinity Network, we host an in-person, half-day program featuring a client panel, professional development workshops and many opportunities for networking between Black PHAN members. At the in-person meeting, Black PHAN members—including incoming first year associates—have the opportunity to be paired with a mentor/mentee for the next year.
- Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Fellowship Program: For several years, we have nominated a diverse senior attorney as an LCLD Fellow, which provides a learning program, including in-person conferences, training in the fine points of legal practice, peer-group projects, and extensive contact with top leadership, including firm managing partners and general counsel. Following the Fellowship, the attorneys join the LCLD Alumni for the remainder of their legal career.
- The Quorum Initiative: Quorum’s mission is to accelerate the advancement of executive women in business by providing outstanding professional development, critical contacts, and the peer-to-peer support necessary to develop courageous and innovative leaders. The firm offers memberships to select senior women at the firm, which enables them to network with senior women at corporations and large organizations and participate in professional and business development workshops.
- Out & Equal: We’re a long-time supporter of Out & Equal (O&E), a nonprofit organization dedicated to achieving LGBT workplace equality. Several of our attorneys serve in leadership roles with O&E and each year, several of our attorneys and professional staff attend the O&E Workplace Summit and we consistently have PH attorneys speak on the conference agenda.
- Williams Institute at UCLA Law: The firm works closely with the Williams Institute at UCLA Law, the premiere “think tank” on LGBT civil rights issues, and has been a national Gold-level supporter for several years. Two of our partners, serve on the Founders Council, an equivalent of a board of directors and one of our associates serves on their NYC Leadership Council. We were the first law firm to serve as national sponsor and continue to work closely with Williams by inviting their leaders to speak at the firm and our attorneys are often invited to moderate panels at Williams’ programs.
- Practice and Region-Specific Opportunities: For our broader community of women and ethnically diverse attorneys, we provide various developmental opportunities via memberships in organizations such as:
o National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA)
o National Association for Women Judges
o Women in Corporate Governance
o Lavender Law Conference & Career Fair
o National Employment Law Council (NELC): connects minorities in management in the field of labor and employment law
o Women in Commercial Finance
o CHiPs: for women at the confluence of law, technology, and regulatory policy
o Hispanic National Bar Association Convention
o Asian American Bar Association of New York
o Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)
o Women in Fund Finance Association
o Hispanic National Bar Association
o Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
o UCLA School of Law / Women LEAD Conference
o Women in Law Empowerment Forum (WILEF)
o National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL)

Support
In 2019, the Firm enhanced its Paid Parental Leave program to increase leave time and reflect full parity for all legal and business professionals at the firm. The new program enables all new parents in the U.S. and the UK to take up to 14 weeks of paid Parental Bonding Leave. In addition, birthing parents are eligible for additional Childbirth Recovery Leave in accordance with local disability laws. With this enhancement, we also the length-of-service requirement so any parent who works at the firm may benefit, regardless of how long they’ve been with us and we offer budget relief to timekeepers on leave with no bonus impact. For returning mothers, we have wellness rooms in our U.S. and London offices which feature lounge seating, refrigerators, telephones and computer stations. The firm also offers curtains for breast-feeding mothers who have glass walled offices and we have partnered with Milk Stork to support our working moms traveling on firm business so that they are able to ship or tote milk back home. 

In 2016, the firm published its first-ever Transgender Transition Guidelines, which were emailed to the entire firm and are housed on the firm’s internal diversity and benefits portals. These guidelines overview steps that should be taken for the transitioning employee, HR, the employee’s management and peers, as well as discuss common transgender terminology and other pertinent information for all parties involved.