Washington, D.C. (May 3, 2022) – Legal Innovators, an alternative legal service provider (ALSP), is pleased to announce the addition of key leadership to its advisory board: Past President of the ABA and NBA and former Locke Lord partner Paulette Brown, former National Association of Minority & Women Owned Law Firms (NAMWOLF) CEO Joel Stern, and Indiana University law professor William Henderson.
For more than 40 years, Brown was engaged in private practice. In addition to her recent tenure at Locke Lord, where she also served as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, she has held several positions including in-house counsel to several Fortune 500 companies.
“As a legal professional who has dedicated much of my career to fostering diversity and inclusion, I believe in Legal Innovators’ model,” said Brown. “I have joined the advisory board because their mentorship model creates unparalleled value for law firms and their clients. Through Legal Innovators, it was learned through personal experience that firms can onboard new attorneys while mitigating risk and maximizing growth, resulting in legal teams that are better prepared to address their clients’ needs.”
“Too often, exceptional young attorneys go unnoticed by big law firms because they haven’t gone to schools from which those firms traditionally recruit,” said Joel Stern, the former CEO of NAMWOLF, a nonprofit trade association comprised of over 195 minority and women-owned law firms in 42 states. Stern has been active within NAMWOLF since 2004. “Legal Innovators has created an alternative pipeline that connects law firms with some of the most promising and diverse legal talents.”
William Henderson is the Stephen F. Burns Chair on the Legal Profession at Indiana University. His research focuses primarily on the empirical analysis of the legal profession. He is the founder and editor of Legal Evolution, an online applied research publication focused on successful legal industry innovation. Henderson said, “Legal Innovators has developed an exciting new solution to the diversity challenges facing many law firms. With time, we hope this model contributes to a strengthened legal field informed by a wide variety of perspectives.”
About Legal Innovators
Founded by CEO Bryan Parker and Chairman Jonathan Greenblatt in 2019, Legal Innovators is an Alternative Legal Service Provider (ALSP) changing the way the law approaches the hiring, pricing, and training of junior legal talent through a two-year work-based program. It assists its clients in meeting their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. Legal Innovators pairs law firms and corporate legal departments with high-quality, trained, and BigLaw-ready junior lawyers. Its lawyers take on substantive work as a member of its clients’ legal teams. Law firms and corporations gain first-hand exposure to Legal Innovators’ lawyers’ capabilities and make more informed decisions based on legal competencies and cultural fit before hiring them permanently.
To learn more about Legal Innovators, visit www.Legal-Innovators.com or contact Director of Operations, Meghan Smith, at meghan@legal-innovators.com or 202-916-8773.
