Husch Blackwell Sanders LLP is committed to recruiting, developing, retaining, and promoting talented lawyers and staff with diverse backgrounds and experiences. At Husch Blackwell Sanders, diversity encompasses a variety of characteristics, lifestyles, and perspectives, including race, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, education, and family and marital status. We firmly believe that our inclusive environment is essential to both the quality of our client service and the personal satisfaction of our lawyers and staff. The result of our commitment is a team of lawyers and staff who are diverse as individuals but unified by our enthusiasm for serving our clients through the practice of law in our communities.

Husch Blackwell Sanders is the combination of two legacy firms recognized both nationally and locally for dedicated efforts to promote diversity:

• Top 100 Law Firms for Diversity in 2008 (Multicultural Law magazine)
• 50 Best Law Firms for Women in 2007 (Working Mother magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers)
• 2007 Best Law Firm for Women (Missouri Lawyers Weekly)
• 2007 Recognition for Advancing Corporate Diversity and Inclusion (Urban League of Kansas City)
• 2007 Recognition of Workplace Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender Employees and Lawyers (Human Rights Campaign of Kansas City, Corporate Celebration of Equality)
• 2008 BLSA Law Firm Diversity Award (Washington University Black Law Students Association)

Minority and female partners have senior leadership positions in Husch Blackwell Sanders’ management, which fully supports the wide variety of initiatives coordinated by our firm’s Diversity Committee.

Our firm and our individual lawyers are also actively involved in promoting diversity within the legal profession. We are signatories to the diversity commitments and action plans of our local bar associations, including the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association’s Diversity Action Plan, the Peoria County Bar Association Diversity Pledge, and the Omaha, Nebraska Diversity Commitment. Our lawyers and staff have played key coordination and leadership roles for the Heartland Diversity Legal Job Fair (in its fourth year in Kansas City, Missouri) and the St. Louis Diversity Job Fair (new in 2008). We participate in the St. Louis and Kansas City minority clerkship programs, and we support scholarship programs benefiting minority law students at Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis University, the University of Missouri at Columbia, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and the University of Kansas.

Diversity and inclusiveness make us a stronger firm and better able to understand our clients’ needs. That is why we are not satisfied with our status quo. We instead are committed to pursue, promote, and enhance diversity at Husch Blackwell Sanders.