High-End M&A Meets a New Challenge: Too Many White Men

Article here. Excerpt:

'As the legal industry places more emphasis on diversity, the scrutiny hasn't escaped one of the profession's most exclusive corners: high-stakes mergers and acquisitions.

But for Wall Street firms that rarely hire laterals, ensuring diversity on trusted deal teams can be especially challenging, and efforts to retain and promote diverse lawyers early in the associate cycle are especially critical.

Some firms in that group, including Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Sullivan & Cromwell, say they are making progress on that front.

Diversity is permeating the consciousness of clients, said Joseph Frumkin, managing partner of Sullivan & Cromwell's M&A group. When Frumkin was pitching in a beauty contest for a $40 billion deal and brought a female associate who did much of the preparation work, he said, the firm got hired.'