Miller Nash's Continued Commitment to Racial Justice

At Miller Nash, we believe that words alone are not enough when it comes to racial justice and equity. In addition to speaking out, we believe that everyone has a responsibility to take action. We are deeply committed as a firm to promoting racial justice, equity, and an ongoing process of healing and reconciliation to dismantle systemic and structural racism.

Recognizing that there is still much work to be done, and that our efforts must expand and evolve as we move forward, we have invested time and resources to implement the following actions over the past several years to further our commitment:

1. Acknowledging and observing Juneteenth (June 19th) as an annual paid firm holiday. (*New in 2020) 
2. Creating a flexible day of paid time off to support Racial Justice and promote antiracist learning. (*New in 2020)
3. Creating a cultural calendar, giving our employees the option to add cultural holidays to their calendar. We also provide additional educational information and resources throughout the year covering a broad range of cultural holidays. (*New in 2019) 
4. Starting in 2015, providing up to 150 hours of billable credit for associates per billable year for hours spent on diversity & inclusion efforts. 
5. Supporting the important goal of diversifying our local legal communities by sponsoring Multnomah Bar Association Fellows in 2019 and 2020 and, since 2006, offering Diversity Fellowships to law students in their first or second years of law school. We will continue to provide these opportunities virtually during summer 2020. 
6. Participating in Mansfield 3.0 (2019-2020) and committing to participate in Mansfield 4.0 (2020-2021). Our first year of participation brought the following advancements, among others: 
   1. We further strengthened our hiring practices, which led us to diversify our 4th year+ associate candidate pool to 79% women, attorneys of color, LGBTQ+, and attorneys with disabilities, and ultimately hire 83% attorneys from these historically underrepresented backgrounds.
   2. We elevated our leadership selection processes to include increased transparency and more inclusive practices, and by doing so, we advanced 64% attorneys from historically underrepresented groups to leadership positions from July 2019 through July 2020. 
   3. Our participation in Mansfield 3.0 inspired us to revise our self-identification form to include gender identity and orientation, race and ethnicity, disability, and veteran status, receiving 64% participation from our employees. 
7. Providing annual implicit bias training to our attorneys and leaders and committing to expanding the racial justice education we bring to our attorneys and staff.
8. In 2016, we implemented a program that affords all attorneys the ability to represent at a reduced fee, small and emerging women and minority business enterprises. 
9. Our very active Diversity Committee meets monthly to discuss our firm’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. 
10. Hiring a Director of Diversity & Inclusion in 2019 to further support our Diversity & Inclusion Committee’s efforts.

We acknowledge that the varying experiences with and participation in systems of power and privilege make ongoing conversations about race, structural and systemic racism, equity, and oppression complex and challenging, but we remain dedicated to encouraging, supporting, facilitating, and continuing these honest conversations throughout our firm until true racial justice has been achieved. Our work has just begun and will be ongoing, but our commitment will remain steadfast.