Jeffrey Rietman
General Counsel
The J.P. Morgan Chase’s diversity program includes commitment from senior management as a critical component of its success. Texas Region General Counsel Jeff Reitman is personally committed to creating a working environment for employees where everyone can do their best work.
Diversity is a component of legal department performance evaluations, and Mr. Reitman’s staff is encouraged to assess how well he manages diversity. The Texas general counsel is also an active participant in the department’s mentoring program, an initiative of the Legal Department Diversity Council to promote retention and advancement of new employees.
To assure that its outside counsel have the diversity of experience to deliver the best legal advice to J.P. Morgan Chase, the organization makes a real effort to find and use minority and women-owned law firms, and tracks the amount of spending with those firms.
The company also tracks billable hours of minority and women partners and associates in majority-owned firms. The company has been a public supporter and signatory of the Statement of Goals of Houston Law Firms and Corporate Legal Departments, which makes a community commitment to increasing minority hiring, retention, and promotion. In that spirit, Chase was recognized for increasing minority hiring in Houston by 38 percent over a five-year period.
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From the March 2002 issue of Diversity & The Bar®