21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge: LCHB’s Work Spreading Across the Legal Community

In February of 2020, Lieff Cabraser’s Employment Practice Group embarked on the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge founded by diversity expert, Eddie Moore, Jr. This project invites participants to develop their own syllabus of 21 short assignments (essays, podcasts, videos, etc.) to enhance their depth of understanding around the intersections of power, privilege, supremacy, equity, and race. Lieff Cabraser’s team developed and curated their syllabus to focus on the experiences of Black Americans, with the understanding that any 21-day project would necessarily only touch the surface of community experiences and opinions, and also would not be a substitute for learning about the separate histories, joys, and challenges of other communities of color. After completing the project, the Group was excited to share the syllabus firm-wide as an optional tool for all of Lieff Cabraser to expand awareness, compassion, and active engagement in the quest for racial equity.

Since then, the firm’s 21-day syllabus has been shared widely outside our firm, resulting in interest and outreach from General Counsels at some of the biggest companies in the US, top corporate diversity and inclusion professionals, opposing counsel from big law firms, top union leaders, and all variety of lawyers at our sister plaintiffs’ firms. We have also gratefully received feedback and ideas for more resources that we intend to incorporate into future learnings.

In addition, the governing Council of the ABA Labor & Employment Law Section has recently adopted our syllabus and urged its 20,000+ members to join the Section leadership in completing the same 21 assignments, starting on June 17^th.

It is with great humility and excitement that we embrace others joining this Challenge, which we hope will inspire new questions, conversations, and education as we as individuals, as well as our institutions, strive for transformative growth and accountability.

Lieff Cabraser recognizes and thanks the team that built the original syllabus earlier this year:

Facundo Bouzat

Lin Chan

Valerie Comenencia Ortiz

Kelly Dermody

Taylor Evans

Rachel Geman

Madeline Gomez

Avery Halfon

Dean Harvey

Daniel Hutchinson

Betsy Keenley

Michelle Lamy

Michael Levin-Gesundheit

Hazel Mottershead

Anne Shaver

Maddy Trione

Tiseme Zegeye

View the ABA message or view the 21-day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge Syllabus