Idea in Brief
The Problem
Many DEI initiatives are scuttled because DEI leaders and legal teams feel themselves to be at odds over questions of acceptable risk. Working in a murky legal environment, both groups engage only at the last minute, when they have to.
What Everybody Forgets
Businesses routinely choose to accept significant legal risk. In most situations they’re confronted with a risk-reward calculus that’s easy to quantify and conceptualize. But with DEI that’s harder, because the only thing that appears on the balance sheet is the cost.
A Better Way
When it comes to establishing a productive partnership between DEI leaders and legal counsel, the key is to collaborate early and often, using the framework this article lays out, so as to balance the nuances of legal risk with the need to implement effective initiatives.
Superficially, a company’s DEI leaders and legal counsel appear to be at odds. DEI leaders, passionate about their cause, think of legal experts as guardians of the status quo and resent them for throwing up roadblocks to their reform-minded initiatives. Legal experts, trained to be methodical in anticipating the worst, resent DEI advocates for not reaching out early and often as they develop their initiatives. Entrenched in their perspectives, both groups engage only at the last minute, when they have to.
