Combating Implicit Bias in the Legal Community

Recently, the Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Board of New York State instituted implicit bias as a category in addition to the usual management, ethics, and subject matter offerings. This addition is part of a movement to offer more courses that cover things like racism and stereotyping in the legal world — and how to combat them.

In September I presented at a CLE event entitled Oops! Implicit Bias, Racial Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat. The CLE was organized through an organization called the American Inn of Court, which exists to improve the skills, professionalism, and ethics by bringing lawyers and judges together in a collegial, educational setting. There were about 150 lawyers at the event, and it was held at the Manhattan offices of the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP.

The first part of the program consisted of a presentation by a person from the Perception Institute about what racism, implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat all are. Afterwards, I led a talk about specific scenarios of stereotype threat and racial anxiety in a legal workplace, as well as practical strategies to address the broader issue of systemic, workplace racism — which is especially present in the legal community.

This is an important subject matter that I hope more attorneys will turn their attention to. On its website, The Perception Institute sums up the problem: Stereotyping and bias are universal human phenomena. No one is immune from the effects of implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. The solution is education, and Gottlieb & Gottlieb looks forward to contributing to that effort.

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Jonathan Gottlieb
Partner
195 Montague Street
14th Floor
Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
Jonathan@GottliebFirm.com
(646) 820-8506