Increasing Diversity in MDL Leadership Through Mentorship, Advocacy, Networking, and Education
In addition to advocating for and facilitating the appointment of Black and Brown attorneys to leadership roles in federal and state-based centralized civil actions (including federal MDLs), Shades of Mass seeks to remedy the gap in representation through mentorship, advocacy, networking, and education.
Ben Crump and Diandra “Fu” Debrosse share the ultimate goal of providing opportunities and advantages to qualified attorneys of color, and ensuring that judges know where to find them and understand the importance of placing them in leadership roles.
“An average of only 5% of [MDL leadership] appointments went to lawyers who identified as nonwhite; 4% of attorneys had undetermined ethnicity in the data, [and] 91% were white.”