How To Leverage Legal Operations Excellence To Achieve DEI Program Success

In 2020, the Cruise Chief Legal Officer, Jeff Bleich, tasked Cruise’s Legal Operations team with building an industry-leading DEI program. Fast forward to 2023 and most of 2024, Cruise Legal was recognized by two legal industry awards for its role in DEI leadership and innovation, and is Mansfield Legal Department Certified.   

Rob Kwant, former Managing Lead for Cruise’s Legal Operations for 6.5 years (currently Head of Legal Operations at Snap), will share step-by-step how he approached this massive project from drafting a strong mission statement that laid out the department’s vision and goals, to building a multifaceted DEI framework, addressing each of the department’s goals in a manner where progress could be measured and tracked.      

Topics include:  

• Summarize the industry standard DEI resources and frameworks Cruise used to build its legal DEI program.  

• Discuss how to draft a DEI program charter and how to get stakeholder buy-in and engagement.  

• Explain how to measure representation in legal department hiring, and then how to take action within the legal department with hiring managers to achieve results in each stage of the hiring funnel.   

• How to build a framework to measure law firm DEI progress, then how to implement a law firm scoring program within the legal department to drive actual change with retained firms.   

• Show Cruise’s outside counsel DEI scoring framework. 

• Practical examples of how our DEI program led to operational excellence and attorney buy-in for broader law firm and matter management processes. For example, requiring Cruise attorneys to consider the DEI scoring of outside counsel prior to engagement and showing the impact of their outside counsel spend on DEI efforts within the legal industry as a whole. 

Note: This presentation was approved for public distribution by Cruise Legal. July 2024, Rob started a new role at Snap, and will not be sharing any information about Snap.