FORTUNE
FORTUNE 5 00
2 0 11 GENERAL COUNSEL SURVE Y
MCCA THANKS FREELANCE WRITER THOMAS THELKELD FOR HIS WORK IN PREPARATION OF THIS ARTICLE, ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY RESULTS, AND RELATED RESEARCH; FROST BURNETT TELEGADAS FOR COMPLETING THE EXTENSIVE AND TIME- CONSUMING SURVEY OF 1,000 COMPANIES TO COMPILE DATA ON RACE/ETHNICITY AND GENDER OF GENERAL COUNSEL; AND PATRICK FOLLIARD FOR AUTHORING THE PROFILES OF THE 20 GENERAL COUNSEL FEATURED IN THIS ARTICLE.
FORTUNE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED THE FIRST FORTUNE 500 IN 1955. BACK THEN THE LIST WAS RESTRICTED TO THE MANUFACTURING, MINING, AND ENERGY INDUSTRIES—THE ONLY COMPANIES REGARDED AS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO MERIT SUCH A LIST.
General Motors easily commanded the top position and current behemoths like Microsoft and Walmart were nowhere to be found. More than half a century later, the United States auto industry is rebuilding after a fl irta- tion with extinction, and Walmart has redefi ned the way Americans shop for everything from jeans to avocados. Meanwhile, software companies have created businesses virtually no one dreamt of in 1955, and much of the world waits impatiently for the next must-have i-gizmo to come out of the Cupertino, California, labs of Apple, Inc. American business looked diff erent in 1955, in more
ways than one. Lawyers were not as important in corporate America as they are now and the lawyers that mattered looked pretty much the same—white and male. T e last half century brought great changes to our society, and big business has sometimes struggled to refl ect and adapt to those changes. T e rise of the women’s movement sent
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011
tens of millions of women into the workforce for the fi rst time, and soon universities and law schools were churning out female candidates capable of competing with men at the highest levels of corporate America—even if corporate America wasn’t ready to let them compete. Now, of course, we see women rising to the top of
important U.S. companies, though not quite yet in the numbers we should. With women making up almost 50 percent of all U.S. law school graduates it is no surprise we see them moving into top positions in the increasingly vital legal departments of major U.S. corporations. T e economic diffi culties of the past few years saw a slight halting of the progress women have made in corporate law offi ces, but it now seems as if they will continue to take over general counsel jobs in more and more top U.S. companies. Great progress has also been made by ethnic minorities in breaking into the upper ranks of corporate law divisions,
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