Tressler's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Mission Statement
Tressler recognizes that diversity is central to our success. A diverse workforce is not only the right thing to do, but is also absolutely essential to our continued ability to provide the highest quality of legal services to our clients. We believe that having employees of varied ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, socioeconomic level and abilities makes our firm stronger, both at the individual level and as a community. As a result, a fundamental priority of Tressler is to recruit, retain, and promote attorneys, professionals and staff members of diverse backgrounds.
Methods for Maintaining and Furthering DEI Initiatives
Our firm believes the best way to maintain and foster diversity is to recruit, retain, and promote diverse talent. To help ensure that we do so, Tressler has implemented various internal programs and has partnered with outside organizations to promote diversity-related goals. Tressler's robust Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee ("DEI Committee") includes attorneys and staff throughout the country. The group creates monthly programming to increase awareness, address new goals and highlight important causes. Click here to view our recent articles.
Firm Leadership and Diversity
Through direct coordination with our firm’s Executive Committee, our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives are maintained and evaluated by an equity partner. The responsible equity partner reports directly to the firm’s Executive Committee on a quarterly basis regarding the effectiveness of the Diversity program and offers suggestions for improvement. Our experience has shown having one partner in charge of our Diversity initiatives allows our firm to move quickly on issues, be proactive and better meet the needs of our professionals.
Affinity Groups
Tressler’s Diversity initiative includes two affinity groups – the Diverse Attorneys’ Group and the Women’s Group. Our hope is that, through these groups, our attorneys find the support they might need and have an outlet where concerns germane to members of these affinity groups can be raised and addressed.
The Diverse Attorneys’ Group has quarterly meetings. All attorneys interested in our firm’s diversity initiative are invited to participate in these meetings and discuss diversity related topics and/or listen to guest speakers discussing the same. The supervising partner for the Diversity initiative also meets on a quarterly basis with associates in the firm to discuss concerns, issues, or questions as they relate to the Diversity initiative.
The Women’s Group meets quarterly to discuss issues and concerns associated to being a female attorney in the current legal marketplace. Topics addressed in the past include business development techniques for women and work-life balance. In addition, the Women’s Group has co-sponsored a variety of women’s business networking events.
Mentoring Program
Tressler has a mentoring program designed to provide individual guidance to all associates. In addition to reporting to a supervising attorney, each new associate is assigned a partner who serves as a mentor. In order to foster communication and bolster the mentor-mentee relationship, the individual partner serving as the mentor for an associate is not in the associate’s reporting chain for billable work at the firm. We have found that the structure of our mentoring program provides significant cross-mentoring for all of our professionals throughout the firm as people of various backgrounds learn more about each other.
Associate Liaison Committee
In order to foster a dialogue between the partnership and associates, Tressler created the Associate Liaison Committee. The Committee, comprised of five associates elected by their peers, presents questions and issues to the partner assigned to work with the Committee. The partner then works with the Committee to resolve various matters.
Involvement with Other Groups
Tressler participates in the Cook County Bar Association’s Minority Students Job Fair annually. In addition, we have sponsored a wide-ranging series of different diversity-related events or programs in the past. By way of example, we sponsored the Chicago Bar Association’s Breaking Barriers-Building Bridges seminar, programs planned by the Defense Research Institute and the Cook County Bar Association, and the Diversity in the Law Program for college students considering a career in law. Tressler is also a member law firm of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms, the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law, the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession and the Step Up Women’s Network.