Goodell DeVries was honored to receive the 2016 Diversity Award from The Black Law Students Association (BLSA) at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Managing partner, Linda S. Woolf attended the BLSA's 41st Annual Scholarship and Awards Banquet and accepted the award on behalf of the firm.
Goodell DeVries is committed to maintaining a legal team reflective of the clients and communities we serve. To that end, the firm’s Recruiting Committee and Diversity Committee work together to attract an inclusive group of qualified attorneys and other legal professionals. Our partnership reflects our culture of inclusivity, including racially diverse, openly gay, and physically disabled partners. We have a proven track record of recruiting, retaining, and advancing attorneys, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, or age. Our Managing Partner is a woman, our Hiring Partner is a woman and 15 of our 36 partners are women. Women and minorities make up 63% of our non-partner attorneys.
Attorneys at Goodell DeVries actively seek out opportunities to participate in and sponsor programs that celebrate diversity and inclusivity, such as mentoring minority students at local law schools and participating in diversity programs sponsored by our clients and other organizations. Goodell DeVries was a proud underwriter of the Maryland Defense Counsel, Inc.'s program, "Great Strides, Great Struggles: The Continuing Case for Diversity 70 Years after Murray", for which the organization won the Defense Research Institute's Diversity Award. One of our partners, a member of the Maryland Defense Counsel's Board of Directors, was instrumental in presenting the program. The firm was also a Premier Sponsor of a symposium jointly presented by the Monumental City Bar Foundation and the Baltimore City Bar Foundation in October 2014, “Race and Gender -- Embracing Diversity in the Legal Profession.” One of the firm’s partners was on the Steering Committee that produced this program and the firm’s Managing Partner moderated one panel and participated in another in the program.
The firm believes that our inclusive professional environment, emphasizing diverse backgrounds, cultures, life experiences and perspectives, not only enriches our legal team on an intrapersonal level, but also enhances the quality of the legal services we provide.
