Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

Tipping the scales toward equality for all.

Diversity and inclusion have long been fixtures of Frost Brown Todd’s culture and indeed remain core to who we are. Still, we recognize that our work is never finished. We are constantly developing and refining our approach to create a more vibrant law firm for our colleagues, our clients, and communities. Our goal is for every member of the Frost Brown Todd team to have equal and ample opportunity to contribute, grow, and find fulfillment in their work.

Four Pillars of DEIB

Diversity

Affinity Groups

Black@FBT

Frost Brown Todd’s Black@FBT affinity group bolsters the excellence and abilities of Black professionals by fostering community, mentorship, and business development while assisting with recruiting, developing, and retaining talent vital to the firm’s success. Each associate in the group is paired with a dedicated mentor to aid in practice growth, network building, and professional advancement. Black@FBT is committed to making a difference internally by strengthening and broadening our roster of diverse talent and externally through community service, social justice activities, and pipeline initiatives within the firm’s markets.

Pride@FBT

Pride@FBT is a firm-wide inclusion and belonging council that supports, represents, promotes, and advocates on behalf of all Transgender, Queer+, Bisexual, Lesbian, and Gay employees. Open to all LGBTQ+ attorneys and business professionals across offices, Pride@FBT is committed to creating a workplace culture that is inclusive, allows employees to bring their authentic selves to work, and provides meaningful connection to the broader LGBTQ+ communities in the firm’s footprint.

Pride@FBT is dedicated to providing a forum that fosters interpersonal connections, promotes mentorship/sponsorship among professionals, provides business development assistance, and supports the firm’s recruiting and retention efforts for LGBTQ+ employees.

Supporting the Future

FBT Zenobia Harris Bivens Diversity Scholarship

Our firm promotes building a pipeline of attorneys from historically underrepresented groups in our local legal community by supporting students in their education and exploration of the law. In addition to our attorneys’ mentorship initiatives, we annually award scholarships to five or more law students from diverse backgrounds who we believe will have a positive and lasting impact on the legal profession. Learn more.

1L Diversity Scholarship

Frost Brown Todd’s 1L Diversity Scholarship is open to law students who have successfully completed paid internships in our summer program. Scholarships are awarded to select students who (a) are from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the legal profession, (b) demonstrate academic excellence, and/or (c) share our core values, including a history of service to the community and a commitment to diversity. Learn more.

Recruitment

We participate in four regional diversity job fairs every year to be able to solicit a diverse pool of candidates beyond our local law schools. We also consider diversity from the start by using structured panel interviewing to guard against unconscious bias, while ensuring that we’re considering the full spectrum of diversity in the hiring process.

Community Engagement

Through various outreach programs, we connect with local and national organizations focused on righting the opportunity imbalance for diverse professionals. The following organizations are among those we routinely and adamantly support:

Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals (ALFDP)
Black Lawyers Association of Cincinnati (BLAC)/CBA Roundtable
Central High School Pipeline Program
Chart Your Own Course (CYOC)/Stakeholders
Columbus Managing Partner Initiative
Cristo Rey High School Pipeline Program
Diverse by Design, Cincinnati Regional Chamber
Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program (GCMCP)
Hispanic National Bar Association
Law & Leadership Institute (LLI)
Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD)
Summer Work Experience in Law (SWEL)

Equity

We have programs in place to monitor and measure our diversity metrics, focusing particularly on the advancement and retention of professionals historically underrepresented in the legal profession. These metrics have helped raise awareness about potential blind spots and led to the adoption of new change initiatives, the most recent of which are detailed below. But, while we are proud that our efforts continue to pay dividends with respect to the employee experience, we acknowledge that we still have plenty of work to do. We know that being true leaders requires a purposeful commitment to EQUITY in every sense of the word.

Mansfield Rule™ Plus Certified

Frost Brown Todd is one of a select group of U.S. law firms to achieve Mansfield Rule™ Plus Certification, a rigorous 12-month benchmarking program that requires law firms to not only consider at least 30% diverse candidates (defined as attorneys of color, women, and LGBTQ+ attorneys) for open positions and advancement opportunities, but also demonstrate that diverse attorneys make up a meaningful percentage of those currently serving in leadership and governance roles. Frost Brown Todd has recommitted to the process and is currently seeking certification under the latest iteration of the program, which annually introduces new or expanded requirements based on evolving best practices. As part of the program, the firm has also committed to participating in three-month, six-month and annual check-in surveys and data collection requests, while also engaging in community building and knowledge sharing with other participating firms.

Stay Interviews

Many companies ask departing employees to sit for an exit interview to understand why the person has chosen to leave the organization. Frost Brown Todd is in the process of establishing the convention of “stay interviews.” This will enable us to better understand why lawyers remain with the firm and what might cause them to leave.

Community Engagement

The following organizations are among those we routinely and adamantly support:

Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals (ALFDP)
CBA LGBT Committee
CEO Action Signatories
Equality Ohio
Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP)
Women in Law Empowerment Forum
Pride Parade Corporate Sponsor

Inclusion

Inclusion Training & Workshops

Creating an inclusive environment benefits us and our clients, who receive better service from the multitude of talent that can only be achieved with people of different backgrounds, distinct perspectives and varied experience. We conduct regular training on unconscious bias, micro inequities, inclusion and other cultural competencies to ensure that Frost Brown Todd continues to be a place where people can both express and be themselves.

We also host numerous workshops and luncheons throughout the year featuring nationally recognized speakers. These workshops are widely attended across our offices and are often participatory in nature, encouraging team members to share experiences and engage more deeply with topics through conversations with their colleagues. Below is a sampling of recent inclusion workshops hosted by Frost Brown Todd:

Legal Minds, Balanced Lives with Jacquesline Walker
Hispanic Heritage with Actors Tony Plana & Ada Maris
The Road to Freedom Day with Lynne Jackson
Cultural Competency with Ritu Bhasin
Hispanic Heritage Month with Efrén Olivares
The Color of Law with Richard Rothstein
LGBTQ+ Inclusion & Allyship with Dru Levasseur
Mass Imprisonment in America with Sam Mihara
Hispanic Heritage: Fireside Chat with Judge Marilyn Zayas
Gatekeeping, Storytelling, and Social Change: The Secret History of Women in Hollywood
Pride Month: Screening and Q&A with directors of CURED
Not Passing by Passover
The Elephant in the Office, Parts 1 & 2
Bias Interrupters
A Conversation About Being Black in America
Generational Differences
Fail Better
Recognizing Bias Against Refugees and Understanding Our Neighbors’ Journeys
Memories of Heart Mountain
City of Cincinnati Poverty Simulation
Colorblindness and Internal Bias
We are the Solution, Not the Problem
The Reinterpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam
Let Me Tell You Something: Creating an LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Workplace
How Emotional Intelligence Can Produce a More Diverse Workplace
The Impostor Syndrome

In addition to training, we conduct employee surveys and monitor firm-wide metrics on recruitment, advancement and compensation. This ensures that we remain vigilant and continue to make progress toward our inclusion goals.

DEIB Reports

Being a truly inclusive law firm requires hard work, ingenuity, and the courage of one’s convictions. But it can also mean getting to work with young people, amazing community organizations, and having a good deal of fun in the process. In addition to relating new developments in our diversity and inclusion journey, these periodic reports are a testament to the extraordinary people who work for us and with us and whose service to diversity is an example and inspiration for us all.

The Frost Brown Todd Diversity & Inclusion Award

Every year we come together to recognize attorneys and business professionals who have gone above and beyond in their service to our diversity and inclusion goals. The recipients of the Frost Brown Todd Diversity & Inclusion Award are true champions of fairness and equality, as evidenced by their support for colleagues and the work they do outside the firm to enrich the lives of their fellow community members.

Belonging

Frost Brown Todd’s forward-looking leadership in the legal DEI space is evident in the adoption of our newest pillar—Belonging—making us one of the first law firms to not only hire a Chief Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer, but to also formalize efforts specifically targeted to engaging the whole of firm in the responsibility we have to elevate the systems and structures supporting employee engagement, well-being, and active allyship in the workplace. We are confident these updated priorities, and the level of engagement they’ve generated, will continue to bolster the retention of talent vital to the firm’s success and to our ability to serve clients in an increasingly intersectional economy.

Inclusion @ Work

We work hard to put our diversity and inclusion values into action every day, not just at the firm, but anywhere we believe our leadership can make a difference. Click below to see inclusion hard at work.

DEIB Committee Members

At Frost Brown Todd, we recognize we are on a journey. And it’s one that requires each of us to lean in to doing and being better for our teammates, for our clients, and for the communities we are privileged to serve. We are at an inflection point; we have more work to do, collectively and individually, to advance diversity and promote equity of opportunity for all on our team. As we draw ever closer to that inclusive culture we seek, we must ensure the whole of Frost Brown Todd—teammates, clients and communities—feel like an important part of our journey forward.