[NATIONALREVIEW] Coca-Cola grabbed headlines in February of this year for the company’s "diversity" initiatives. Most notoriously, leaked slides from a training program commanded Coca-Cola employees to "try to be less white." Then, the company issued strict requirements to its outside counsel to mandate the selection of lawyers on the basis of race:Try to be less prosperous.
Coca-Cola’s new general counsel Bradley Gayton recently announced a new set of diversity guidelines for outside counsel. Under these guidelines, outside counsel will commit that for any new matter "at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys." If outside counsel fails to meet the commitment over two quarters, it will incur "a non-refundable 30% reduction in the fees payable for such New Matter going forward until the commitment is met."
At the time, NR contributor Ed Whelan walked through some of the legal and practical problems with this heavy-handed approach.