Engagement & Impact

We approach community-building through two lenses: engagement and impact. First, we engage with our community members—including clients, lawyers, business professionals, and alumni—to forge connections, foster understanding, and identify opportunities for individual and team growth. Second, we assess our engagement efforts by measuring our impact and identifying areas for continued progress.

Engagement and impact work hand-in-hand to lift up our Ropes & Gray community. On the engagement front, we sponsor and support a robust array of affinity groups, community events, and professional development programs that are open to all. To assess our impact, we have an active and dedicated committee that reviews the effect that our engagement initiatives have on the experiences of our community.

These are just a few examples of how our firm does the hard work every day to build a welcoming community. We invite you to visit us again for updates.

The firm’s Engagement & Impact Committee implements the firm’s mission as it relates to our engagement efforts. The committee comprises colleagues from across the firm, including partners, leaders within the business support team, members of the firm’s engagement team, and representatives from our office of the general counsel. The co-chairs are partners Paulita Pike and Jen Cormier.

Our committee’s mission is built upon four pillars:

• Cultural awareness – Learning from, teaching, and engaging the entire Ropes & Gray community regarding the importance of different identities and perspectives through our forums, resource networks, and heritage month programming.
• Recruiting and talent advancement – Recruiting and retaining top talent from a wide variety of backgrounds, among both attorneys and business support professionals, and ensuring processes that provide all community members the opportunity to thrive.
• Leadership development – Enriching and equipping our team members to become impactful leaders within the firm and in our communities, including by providing opportunities to enhance essential skills and foundational business concepts.
• Allyship – Fostering community understanding by offering opportunities to share and providing practical frameworks to build lasting connections.
  
  

In pursuing each of these pillars, we are guided by a commitment to making a positive impact on our people, our clients, and our communities.

At Ropes & Gray, we are dedicated to fostering understanding among people from all identities and building community. Our attorney forums—the Ropes Multicultural Forum, Women’s Forum, LGBTQ+ Forum, Jewish Affinity Group, and First-Generation Professionals Group—sit alongside office-based resource networks for business professionals. These groups collaborate frequently and provide opportunities to gather, learn about different cultures and identities, and celebrate our varied backgrounds. Our communities are open to all lawyers and business support professionals wishing to join the respective groups.

Ropes & Gray frequently hosts events and offers educational programs, open to all in our community, which are designed to foster deeper connections and community understanding.

The firm recognizes cultural events and celebrations by hosting educational programs, including bringing in speakers for Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, Arab American Heritage Month, Pride Month, Latine | Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Heritage Month, and more. Recent speakers have included Senator Chuck Schumer, author Isabel Wilkerson, and comedian and journalist Dean Obeidallah.

In addition, the Women’s Forum hosts an annual speaking series in honor of our colleague Tracy Brown, who passed away in 2024. The series welcomes speakers to offer Ropes & Gray lawyers and business support team members perspective on their own careers. The speakers have included Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, legal scholar Lisa Fairfax, and Harvard Business School professor Laura Huang.

The Women’s Forum also hosts the Women @ RopesTalk podcast series, which spotlights extraordinary women who have had successful careers and are making a positive impact in their workplaces and in their communities. It is available through Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and on Ropes & Gray’s website.