Personal Disclosures – Do It Subtlety or Not at All!

More and more law firms are, at the time you submit a resume, asking for “confidential” disclosures about race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities and whether you are a veteran. 

The reason the firms are doing it that that they subscribe to the Mansfield Rule, which is an attempt to increase and sustain diversity in the legal practice.  Essentially, the firms are trying to make sure that they are considering enough candidates form protected classes.  Additionally, many law firms contract with the government and they are required by law to provide equal employment to qualified attorneys with disabilities.  

Of course this information is only used in accordance with the ADA and other laws and most firms clearly state that refusal to provide the information will not subject you to any adverse treatment.

Without getting into the merit of the Mansfield Rule or the value of these disclosures at such an early point of the application process, it is clear that some attorneys are choosing to put this information on their resume.  As a result of these requests, we are now seeing statements on legal resumes about race, gender identity, disability status (and accommodations needed), and veteran status.  We’ve even seen these statements in the heading of the resume where you might normally see an attorney’s home address.

To be clear, it is the position of those of us at Legal Resume Review that these statements on a legal resume are still INAPPROPRIATE.  

If a firm asks the question, feel free to answer them.  They need the information.  But don’t think that you need to advertise any of this information on your resume.  The resume is a document that highlights your skills and qualifications, not one that states what accommodations you might need. 

If you feel that any of this information is critically important to get to an employer, you can certainly “finesse” it into your resume.  If you want to highlight your military service, you could add the dates you were in the service to your resume.  If you want to highlight that you are African American, you might subtlety state that you were/are a member of the Black Lawyers Association (assuming that you were/are a member, of course).  Stating this information in any other way is still out of line for a legal resume.  

We applaud all firms’ efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in the legal workforce.  We certainly need to do better in these regards.  But putting this information on your resume is not the way to get noticed or get hired.  As a result, they should be left off the resume.