Profiles in Leadership – Michelle Fang

The FBA is powerfully situated—and bears critical responsibility—to ensure that federal practice and federal courts truly reflect the rich diversity of the nation we serve. The FBA’s Committee on Diversity and Inclusion was established to lead the organization in fulfilling this responsibility by advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, both within the organization, and in the broader legal community. A core component of the Committee’s work involves ongoing guidance from and partnership with Advisory Boards composed of national D&I leaders. By learning from and collaborating with these leaders from around the country, our collective effort toward true diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal legal community is critically strengthened.

Over the next several weeks, the FBA e-Newsletter will feature interviews with members of our Corporate Advisory Board. For the inaugural article, Lisa M. Kpor, an Associate at Holland & Knight, LLP, who has served as a member of the Task Force and Standing Committee since its inception, sat down with Michelle Fang, Chief Legal Officer at Turo, a car-sharing marketplace in over 5,500 cities across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. interviewed Michelle.

We welcome and encourage you to share these profiles and to join in the work of the FBA D&I Committee.  Learn more about our ongoing work here. 

Tara Norgard

Chair, FBA Diversity & Inclusion Committee

 

    Michelle Fang                         Lisa M.Kpor

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Lisa: Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today.

Michelle: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Lisa: Many members of the Federal Bar Association may recall that you penned the January 2019 General Counsel Open Letter to Law Firms that criticized firms for having partnership classes that remain largely male and largely white. What makes diversity and inclusion so crucial that it drove you to prepare that letter?

Michelle: I want to start by saying that, while I spearheaded the Open Letter, it was group effort on behalf of some amazing lawyers who are part of the Women’s General Counsel Network. The Open Letter was the result of seeing certain partnership class announcements in December 2018 and our frustration that things were not better off in terms of diversity in the legal profession. In hindsight, my shock was naïve. Had I been paying better attention, I would not have been so surprised. Since then, I have gone on a journey of educating myself about what people like me can do to take action to help increase diversity in the legal profession. We are not providing the best counsel to our clients if our profession does not reflect the diversity of this country.

Lisa: Was it your reaction to the 2018 partnership classes at certain firms that compelled you to be more involved in diversity and inclusion efforts?

Michelle: Absolutely. I had mentored women attorneys for a long time and had intentionally hired women as lead partners on a number of my matters, but I had not been involved in any meaningful way with diversity and inclusion efforts in our profession. After the Open Letter was released, I wanted to better inform myself about how I can personally contribute to helping to change some of the diversity issues facing our profession. I had no desire to just write a letter, and let that be the end of it. I wanted to make a difference. So, I started speaking with diversity and inclusion experts and also listening to critics who felt the Open Letter was “all talk” and would be bound to fail like so many efforts before it. After crowd sourcing best practices, and with support from Diversity Lab, I put together a list of Strategies and Tactics For In-House Legal Departments to Improve Outside Counsel Diversity. When someone says, “What can I do?” I send them that link. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. No one in-house legal team can do everything on that list, but if everyone does three things on this list, we can start to make a meaningful difference.

Lisa: You mentioned the Diversity Lab a few moments ago. Can you tell us more about that organization?

Michelle: Diversity Lab defines itself as an incubator for innovative ideas and solutions that boost diversity and inclusion in law. Diversity Lab has a certification process called the Mansfield Rule, modeled after football’s Rooney Rule, for both law firms as well as in-house law departments. The aim is to boost diversity in law firm and corporate leadership. Under the Mansfield Rule, among other things, legal organizations must affirmatively consider a slate of candidates that is at least 30% diverse for key leadership positions, partnership/promotion decisions, and formal client pitch opportunities. You can be assured that if you only interview majority males for a role, then the chances of hiring a straight, white male will essentially be 100%. The aim of the Mansfield Rule is that, if you broaden whom you consider for these positions, you will inevitably hire and advance a greater number of highly-qualified diverse attorneys. I am proud to report that Turo recently obtained Mansfield Certified Plus status.

Lisa: Tell us about the Pay It Forward Movement you’ve been discussing on social media.

Michelle: Kate Huyett, Chief Marketing Officer of Bombas, founded the Pay It Forward Movement. The movement provides an avenue for experienced professionals to open up their calendars and “speed” mentor Black students or business professionals. Lawyers occasionally ask me, “How can I make a difference?” If people want to make a difference in the lives of Black professionals, here’s something YOU CAN DO. Sign up and pay it forward. I have been spending time each Friday doing #PayItForward and have met some amazing attorneys. It is not only valuable for the mentee, but as a mentor I have found it profoundly rewarding and energizing. One senior attorney I connected with through Pay It Forward wrote to me about a week after our first session and said, “I have embraced your suggestions and have had SUCH AWESOME responses. Seriously. I am so grateful and it is amazing the amount of wisdom that I received in the short time span. I am interviewing with four companies right now and hope to be considering offers soon . . . .” What a valuable use of 45 minutes of my own time to have such an impact on someone else’s career prospects. Because it is a grassroots initiative, anyone can get started immediately and decide for themselves how many hours they would like to participate and on which topics they are open to discussing. Other movements that came out of Black Lives Matters in the professional sphere that I am passionate about include Tony Effik’s #BlackandBrilliant and Niani Tolbert’s #HireBlack. These initiatives aim to build a more diverse workforce and, as an ally, I have been trying to amplify their messages.

Lisa: How does the Pay It Forward Initiative differ from the Advanced Law Mentoring Program in which you have been involved?

Michelle: Advanced Law is a collective of more than 250 general counsel reshaping the legal market by sharing outside counsel performance feedback with a focus on curating a high quality panel of regional law firms that excel at client service. Last year, Advance Law kicked off a new mentoring program where in-house counsel can mentor diverse law firm lawyers looking to be elevated to partner or equity partner. Holland & Knight is a member of the Advance Law Mentoring Program, and I have been mentoring a fantastic attorney at Holland & Knight. We have mutually rewarding conversations, and I try to encourage her regarding self-advocacy and give her advice about client development.

Lisa: That’s amazing. I read that you are also involved with the Law in Technology Diversity Collaborative. Can you talk a bit about the Collaborative?

Michelle: I am thrilled to talk about that! That initiative was born from eBay’s legal diversity internship program started by attorney David Pilson. eBay’s Patricia Svilik expanded the program and recruited other technology companies to create a cross company summer associate class.  The tech companies interview and source the talent, in consultation with the law firm, going to both top Bay Area law schools as well as law schools across the country with high diversity indexes. In a way, we are using our influence to get law firms to consider top talent that they might not otherwise have interviewed through on campus recruiting. The summer associates spend half their summer in-house at a tech company and half their summer with a partner law firm. In our first year of the program last summer, seven technology companies, twelve law firms, and fifteen summer associates participated in the Law in Technology Diversity Collaborative in Silicon Valley. This year, we had fifteen technology companies, eighteen law firms, and twenty-five first-year law students participating in the program in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The goal is to provide diverse law students with a rich summer associate program where they can receive unique in-house experience as well as top law firm experience. They are paired with law firm and in-house mentors and we offer rich professional development curriculum and social networking events. Plus, they will have a cohort of peers to serve as a source of referrals and support system as they progress in their legal careers. One of the biggest problems we are facing is keeping amazingly talented, diverse attorneys in the profession and the Collaborative hopes to help address that problem. Any company can partner with law firms and do this, regardless of whether they are participants in the Collaborative.

Lisa: With all of these various diversity initiatives in place, some of which have been in existence for many years, how is it possible that law firms have not made more significant gains in terms of diversity and inclusion in the past decade?

Michelle: One of the biggest obstacles is origination credit, which unfortunately is tainted with the systematic and institutionalized racism of our society. Power within many law firms is obtained by which attorney receives origination for first bringing a client to the law firm. So if an AmLaw 50 law partner landed a Fortune 100 company as a client in the 1980s, it is quite possible that partner – whether no longer working on that client’s portfolio, retired or deceased – may still be getting origination credit (and compensation) for the relationship and all the work subsequently brought to the firm. This can make it extraordinarily difficult for diverse attorneys to obtain credit, compensation, and recognition, not only for the work they are doing, but also for the new cases they are bringing into the firm.  There are two great strategies for ensuring diverse attorneys – whether they are women, lawyers of color, lawyers with disabilities, and/or LGBTQIA lawyers – are given an opportunity to succeed in our profession. The first strategy is to ensure that diverse attorneys receive origination credit for their involvement in bringing new matters to the law firm. I encourage in-house counsel to insist, and verify, that if they are intending that a specific attorney receive origination credit on a matter, that that attorney will in fact receive that origination credit before awarding the work. I can’t tell you how many stories I have heard where even after insisting a specific diverse lawyer receive origination credit, it did not in fact happen because of the antiquated and opaque way many firms allocate origination credit. Relatedly, many well-intentioned in-house counsel throw up their hands and say they want to help, but they don’t know any diverse partners to hire on their matters so they keep going to the same trough. I challenge those lawyers to get out of their comfort zone. I recently had a new matter in a niche area of the law and realized every attorney I knew in that space was a majority male. So I pushed myself outside my comfort zone. I actually reached out to Don Prophete (Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete), who had been quite vocal in his frustration with the Open Letter, and efforts like it which have produced little meaningful change, and asked him if he knew of any diverse lawyers who practiced in that area. He gave me the names of 3 outstanding diverse women litigators – Lillian Hardy (Hogan Lovells), Tara Elliot (Latham Watkins), and Indira Sharma (Saul Ewing). While they didn’t specialize in the area of the law that I was looking for, they did indeed look quite impressive in their own areas of expertise. So I reached out to each of them and set up a “virtual” coffee to get to know more about their practice. Each of them blew me away and I would hire them in a nanosecond if I were hiring in their areas of practice. I have already referred one to a former colleague and think I will have the chance to work with another in the next few months. If we don’t take the time to get to know outstanding diverse attorneys outside of our own networks, we can be confident things won’t change in our profession. I challenge every in-house attorney to get to know excellent diverse attorneys outside of your network, so that one day you may have the opportunity to hire them. Remember too, the way partners become powerful rain-makers is that they are not only hired for their area of expertise, but that they bring work to other attorneys at their firm. Getting to know their specialties is important, but if you have diverse attorneys you value, give them the chance to bring work to their firm beyond their area of expertise. The second method is to hire lawyers from minority-or-women-owned law firms. When we released the Open Letter, one of the first people to reach out to me was Joel Stern, the CEO of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms, Inc. (NAMWOLF). I had never explicitly gone to NAMWOLF to hire a lawyer, and now it’s one of the first places I go when I have a new case. The reality is that the AmLaw 200 is unlikely to achieve parity in terms of representation at the equity partner level for diverse lawyers in the near future, so if we want to make a meaningful difference in our profession, hiring attorneys from minority and-women-owned firms is an important part of the equation.

Lisa: I noticed that you mentioned lawyers with disabilities in your last response. As we know, disabled attorneys are a diverse group in their own right. How do disabled attorneys fit into this conversation?

Michelle: I really must give credit to William Goren, who is an openly deaf attorney, for teaching me the importance of being more inclusive in this regard. When Bill saw the Open Letter, he called me out and told me about the importance of including disabled attorneys in this conversation. Whenever I speak out about diversity, equity and inclusion in our profession, I know I will hear from Bill if I don’t include persons with disabilities. He keeps me honest. Just think about how much disabled attorneys have had to overcome just to become members of our profession. We need to make sure disabled lawyers are not lost in the shuffle when we talk about diversity and inclusion. I don’t think there is an easy solution to ensuring our profession is more welcoming and inclusive of disabled attorneys, many of who are unlikely to self-identify due to societal stigma, but I know that at least being conscious of this need is a step in the right direction.

Lisa: It seems as though your recommendations fall into distinct buckets – diversifying the pipeline; retention and promotion of diverse attorneys; and mentorship. What would you say to successful majority male attorneys who feel uncomfortable mentoring diverse associates and young lawyers?

Michelle: What better thing can you do with your privilege than help give exposure, opportunity and sponsorship to attorneys who don’t look like you? We cannot make meaningful strides in diversity and inclusion in this profession unless the powerful rain-makers at law firms, who are largely, but not exclusively white males, are personally invested in these efforts. Bring diverse attorneys on your case, give them meaningful client-facing opportunities, advocate for their advancement. Talk to them after work over a sandwich and ask them about their career goals. These seemingly small moments can make someone’s career. If you are only mentoring, golfing and advocating for people who look like you, all you will be doing is ensuring the status quo. That is not serving the profession, your firm, or your clients as best as you can. We don’t want to get rid of straight, white male lawyers. We need them! They have so much to give to our profession and their clients, so much to teach and contribute. But bring those who don’t look like you along, and help them get to where you have gotten. Life has given you a leg up, and now it’s your turn to pay it forward.

Lisa: So, in a matter of 18 months, you have gone from not being an active participant in diversity and inclusion initiatives to galvanizing 240 general counsel to sign an Open Letter on diversity and inclusion in our profession, participating in the Pay It Forward Movement, serving as an Advance Law Mentor, being a founding member of the Law in Technology Diversity Collaborative, and contributing to so many similar programs. How do you find time to actively participate in so many diversity and inclusion initiatives?

Michelle: Honestly, I don’t have the time, but we make time for things that are priorities in our lives. I carve out time whenever I can. Fortunately, my company and my team have been supportive of my efforts. But for far too long the obligation to make advancement in diversity and inclusion has fallen on diverse attorneys to do all of that work. That is not sustainable, fair, or enough in and of itself to achieve the transformation needed.

Lisa: I have noticed that you are very active on LinkedIn. You may not know this, but you commented on one of my LinkedIn posts.

Michelle: Really? What did I say?

Lisa: Last Spring, I shared a post on LinkedIn that read, “I am eternally grateful for people like Alexis Robertson and Bobby Earles who take a great idea and pair it with action. The “It’s Just Black Lawyers Having Lunch Event” was a memorable and impactful event that felt more like a reunion than a networking luncheon. I look forward to attending many more luncheons in the future.” Michelle, you commented and said, “What a wonderful way to build community and support and keep more diverse attorneys in the pipeline. We need you there.” I was so amazed and honored that you chimed into this conversation, especially because many lawyers who look like you might assume that my post was not for them. What prompted you to chime in and encourage me to continue participating in, and my firm to support, those types of events?

Michelle: What a wonderful way for this to come full circle. I do remember your post now. I know both Alexis and Bobby through the work that I have been doing in the diversity and inclusion space. They both took the initiative to reach out to me, and it has been a genuine pleasure getting to know them better. I have been intentional about amplifying their messages; particularly with respect to what white allies can do to support Black attorneys in law firm practice. The “It’s Just Black Lawyers Having Lunch” events were on my radar because of Alexis and I wanted to lend my support. As an ally, one of the things I can do with my voice and my privilege is to inform law firms that events like these matter. If you have a diverse leader at your law firm that is doing something innovative like this, it is important. Do more of this and support and reward it. That’s why I responded to your post. It was a signal to the legal community that this was an important event and it matters, not just to Black attorneys, but it matters to white clients as well. We support and value diversity and inclusion at law firms.

Lisa: There is a looming fear that the diversity gains achieved since the end of the Great Recession will be tumble due to the COVID-19 pandemic and current economic crisis. Do you think the pandemic could jeopardize diversity efforts at law firms? If so, what can we do to lessen the blow?

Michelle: That is a meaningful, valid fear. The number of diverse attorneys in the legal profession is just recovering from the meager gains that had been made, and were lost, in the recession of 2008. I would challenge law firms to understand that diversity and inclusion are not things that are simply “nice to have.” This is a business imperative for you. If you are not keeping up in this area, especially with social justice efforts and the Black Lives Matter Movement gaining mainstream acceptance, I think it will be hard to remain competitive. Hopefully, some of the insight I have provided today can shed light on ways law firms and in-house teams can continue moving forward with respect to diversity and inclusion.

Lisa: Finally, what efforts do you wish to see implemented in the Federal Bar Association to advance diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Michelle: I would love to see more diversity among FBA leadership. The FBA should also have concrete, tangible actions that demonstrate its commitment to diversity and inclusion. I think the FBA is certainly heading down this path, and I am excited to see what is ahead.

Lisa: I share that excitement as a member of the FBA Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee. I am also very excited about our new Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan that we will be sharing with FBA membership in the near future. Michelle, thank you so much for your time.

Michelle: Thank you, Lisa. It was wonderful joining you.

 

About Michelle Fang
Michelle Fang is the Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Turo, the global leader in peer-to-peer car sharing. Previously, Michelle spent 9 years at eBay serving in a number of leadership positions, including Head of Global Intellectual Property, Head of North American Litigation, and most recently, General Counsel of StubHub. In 2019, she was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology (National Diversity Council), General Counsel of the Year (by both Corporate Counsel: Women, Influence, & Power in Law Awards & the Association of Corporate Counsel), The Recorder named Michelle as one of the California Women Leaders in Tech Law and the Financial Times of London profiled Michelle as one of the Five Top Fast Mover GCs.

About the Author
Lisa M. Kpor, a litigation attorney at Holland & Knight, LLP, who has served as a member of the Task Force and Standing Committee since its inception, interviewed Michelle. Lisa’s practice focuses on a broad range of legal issues, including shareholder oppression actions, financial services litigation, product liability disputes, and complex breach of contract suits.

 

About the FBA

Founded in 1920, the Federal Bar Association is dedicated to the advancement of the science of jurisprudence and to promoting the welfare, interests, education, and professional development of all attorneys involved in federal law. Our more than 16,000 members run the gamut of federal practice: attorneys practicing in small to large legal firms, attorneys in corporations and federal agencies, and members of the judiciary. The FBA is the catalyst for communication between the bar and the bench, as well as the private and public sectors. Visit us at fedbar.org to learn more.