Akin Gump Featured in Council of Urban Professionals Q&A Column

The Council of Urban Professionals (CUP), an organization devoted to helping develop diverse business and civic leaders, has featured Akin Gump in a Q&A profile on its website.

Akin Gump is a long-time supporter of efforts to achieve greater diversity, and the profile notes the firm’s belief that “the contributions of attorneys with diverse backgrounds, viewpoints and experiences enhance the services” it provides to its clients and community. The firm sets ambitious goals and has a two-tiered diversity committee structure (one on the firmwide level and another for each office) to ensure those goals are met.

Akin Gump’s efforts to hire lawyers with varied backgrounds go beyond just recruitment of attorneys. The profile explains that the firm “is a leading supporter of pipeline programs, such as Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, the Thurgood Marshall Summer Law Internship Program and PALS.” In the past year, Akin Gump also launched the Robert Strauss/Akin Gump Diversity Scholarship Program, which provides a $25,000 scholarship to two outstanding second-year law students to offset expenses for their third year of law school.

As noted in the profile, Akin Gump and CUP have a strong partnership dating back to the organization’s inaugural Annual Lawyers’ Forum in 2010, where attorneys from the firm served on the host committee. In addition, corporate partner Trey Muldrow was named a CUP Catalyst last year and corporate partner Lucas Torres was named to the board of directors. The profile concludes by adding that Akin Gump believes “CUP provides a tremendous platform for professionals of all backgrounds and ages to come together and learn from one another about what it takes to advance and succeed in today’s business world.”