Law firms are reaaaaaaally not diverse. Just how bad are things? In a must-read, year-old-but-sadly-still-relevant op-ed in The Washington Post, titled “Law is the least diverse profession in the nation. And lawyers aren’t doing enough to change that,” Stanford Law professor Deborah Rhode writes:

Women account for only 17 percent of equity partners, and only seven of the nation’s 100 largest firms have a woman as chairman or managing partner. Women are less likely to make partner even controlling for other factors, including law school grades and time spent out of the workforce or on part-time schedules. Studies find that men are two to five times more likely to make partner than women.

Although blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans now constitute about a third of the population and a fifth of law school graduates, they make up fewer than 7 percent of law firm partners… In major law firms, only 3 percent of associates and less than 2 percent of partners are African Americans.

Last week, I stood with a bunch of other lawyers at an event at IDEO SF, brainstorming ways to tackle these abysmal numbers and to improve the experiences of underrepresented folks in law firms, in general. In just about ten minutes, we came up with dozens of ideas. Were they all doable? No. Were they even good? Well, not necessarily… But did they have potential? Might there be something worth exploring in some of these? Yes, absolutely. Read on for a few of them.

• Decide how you’re going to measure your progress — and then have people from the underrepresented groups in your firm hold you accountable.
• Abolish the billable hour. Too hard? Make a list of the contributions you value, beyond hours billed, and establish some ($$) rewards for them.
• Enforce moments of gratitude — say, at the start of a partners’ meeting, a five minute period in which everyone stops to write an email acknowledging someone else’s contribution (and track who gets acknowledged).
• Pay people. Pay referral bonuses *only* for candidates from underrepresented groups.
• Give every single person from an underrepresented group in your firm a sponsor — not a mentor, a sponsor.
• Articulate the reason a candidate/employee didn’t advance — the *real* reason (even if it’s not directly to that candidate/employee). Out loud.
• Ban all white or all male teams. Just ban them.

What do you think of these? Do they spark any new ideas for you?