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Key BLAC-CBA Round Table Programs
1. Cincinnati Clerkship Plan Program
Launched in 1987, the Clerkship Program encourages Greater Cincin- nati legal institutions to employ qualified minority law students.
The Program was established as a constructive effort to carry out the Round Table’s goal of removing racial barriers and to increase the number of minority lawyers in the mainstream of the profession.
2. Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program
Founded in 1998 as a program of the Round Table, the GCMCP’s mission is to increase opportunities for minority attorneys in the assignment of corporate legal work through partnership among corporate counsel, majority-owned law firms, minority owned law firms and public sector organizations. The GCMCP now operates as its own 501c3 entity. GCMCP is modeled after the Amer- ican Bar Association’s Minority Counsel Demonstration Program and the California Minority Counsel Program. Visit gcmcp.org for more information.
3. SWEL: Summer Experience Working in Law
Employers hire SWEL scholars
for part-time or full-time paid internships providing assistance to administrative staff, associates and law clerks. Students are given the opportunity to develop valu- able mentoring relationships with attorneys, judges and law clerks. Each Friday during the eight-week program, SWEL scholars attend academic preparation classes. Notable SWEL alumni include: Kenneth Parker, U.S. Attorney; Reginald L. Staples, Jr., partner, Dinsmore & Shohl; Ryan Ragland, Hamilton County Public Defend- er’s Office; and Max Langenkamp, Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer, Cintas.
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‘We need to get beyond race’
Our great challenge right now moving forward is truly the retention issue. I was on a program in Washington a couple of months ago and we were talking about diversity and inclusion, particularly in the law firm setting, and sadly law is one of the last professions [to diversify] and it shouldn’t be. We should be the leaders in this. ‘Equal justice under the law’ — it’s inscribed on the Supreme Court building. We should be all about this, but law firms in general, “Big Law”, are the least diverse
of professions. You’ve got more diversity in financial management, accounting and some others, but not in law, and we need to change that paradigm.
The point that I made at this program in Washington, it was a room filled with debt restructuring professionals, [is that] you kind of always need a mentor in that law firm. You need someone who is willing to be your sponsor, to be your mentor, because by and large, when you come out of law school, you don’t know anything. You don’t know really what a complaint looks like, you don’t know where the
THE REPORT | March/April 2022 | CincyBar.org
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