Diversity History

Crowe & Dunlevy is a leader in the Oklahoma legal community in hiring and promoting the best and brightest applicants who are women, racial and ethnic minorities or physically disabled.  With respect to lawyers, as of 2007, 20% of Crowe & Dunlevy’s shareholders are female and 9% are minority.   Thirty-nine percent of Crowe & Dunlevy’s associates are female and 24% are minority.  Crowe & Dunlevy has worked to ensure that there have been no impediments to the promotion of women and minorities within the firm.  Roger Stong is the firm's current President.  Judy Hamilton Morse, who chairs our Litigation Department, was the longest serving President of Crowe & Dunlevy (from 1997 to 2000) and the first woman ever to head a major Oklahoma-based law firm.  There has been at least one woman on the Firm’s five-member Executive Committee for virtually 25 years.  Crowe & Dunlevy continues to explore and, on a regular basis, address issues such as minority recruitment, training/mentoring programs, maternity leave, part-time schedules, sexual harassment prevention and other initiatives designed to attract and retain women and minorities.

Crowe & Dunlevy’s long history of nurturing inclusion and mutual respect continues with racial and ethnic minorities.  In 2000, in response to Crowe & Dunlevy shareholder William G. Paul’s initiative as President of the American Bar Association to promote diversity in the legal profession, Crowe & Dunlevy contributed $50,000 as a founding firm of the ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship.  Mr. Paul and his wife Barbara also made a contribution of $50,000.  Only three other law firms in the nation have made a commitment to this scholarship fund of $50,000 or more.  To date, at least 100 ABA scholars have benefited from the financial assistance afforded them by the American Bar Association to further their legal careers.  Crowe & Dunlevy continues this rich tradition of leadership in diversity issues with, among other things, Jimmy K. Goodman, immediate past president of Crowe & Dunlevy, who has served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession (Commissioner, 1999-2002) and the American Bar Association’s Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice (council member 2003-2004).  Crowe & Dunlevy lawyers regularly participate in reviewing applications received for the ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship and for the ABA Judicial Clerkship Program.  The ABA Judicial Clerkship Program is a joint effort of the ABA Commission of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession and the ABA Judicial Division that is designed to bring judges and minority law students together through structured networking activities, including clerkships.