Don Liu was looking forward to the 2006 conference of the National
Don Liu was looking forward to the 2006 conference of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. He’d been going to NAPABA’s annual meeting for years, and he always enjoyed reconnecting with friends in the group. Plus, that year the conference was being held in Liu’s home town of Philadelphia, where he was then working as general counsel at home builder Toll Brothers Inc.
But one thing bothered Liu: Asian and Pacific American (APA) attorneys had hit a bottleneck in the legal profession. They’d made some progress. At top law schools, for example, they were nailing about 10 percent of the spots, double their percentage in the total U.S. population. And they were quickly moving into law departments and firms. That’s where they seemed to stall, though. They had the most minority associates at top New York firms, but the worst conversion rate to partner. And they had only five general counsel in the Fortune 500.
Liu wasn’t satisfied with numbers like these. And he knew that Wilson Chu shared his dismay. After all, it was Chu, the head of NAPABA’s Partners Committee (and now a partner in the Dallas office of K&L Gates), who had encouraged him to take over the association’s In-House Counsel Committee.
“We thought it was an absolute necessity to have more GCs,” says Liu. Chu adds that the rise of GCs also helps partners: “It’s symbiotic.” So at the 2006 conference, they set a goal of “10 by 10” — 10 APA GCs in the Fortune 500 by the year 2010.
As it turned out, Asian attorneys didn’t need four years to hit that target. By the time NAPABA’s 2007 conference rolled around, the number was already 11. After later peaking at 13, the total has since dropped down to 10 because of various job changes. And within the Fortune 1000, there are currently 18 GCs of Asian background.
What’s behind the success of Asian lawyers? And are there lessons from which other minorities can learn?
The sudden spike in GCs wasn’t really so sudden — the effort that produced it had been going on for years. NAPABA, for example, hosted conferences that offered advice for in-house lawyers at virtually every stage of their careers. But Asian lawyers didn’t land more GC jobs merely by sitting through a few CLE classes. Progress was achieved through working and networking. And it came from a willingness to confront stereotypes — and the reality behind them.
Liu (who became general counsel at Xerox Corp. in 2007) and other NAPABA members celebrate the victories, but they don’t take credit. The praise belongs to the individual GCs, they say.
But other Asian attorneys are quick to return the compliment. NAPABA helped them in a variety of ways — from planting the idea that they could strive for the top job to providing the final push to get it. And the organization has fostered a spirit of cooperation that has bound and lifted them.
GCs Michael Korniczky and Alan Tse credit NAPABA with helping them land their jobs. Korniczky, whose father is Hungarian and whose mother is a native of Guam, is now the general counsel of Graham Packaging Co. Inc., a Fortune 1000 company that packages some of the best-known brands in the country. Korniczky was previously chief patent counsel at Crown Cork & Seal Co. Inc. But he followed NAPABA’s suggestions to position himself as a general business lawyer, expanding his focus to include commercial litigation, product liability and securities law.
Equally important, Korniczky says, he got to know lawyers from around the country who were happy to help. When Graham tapped him for the GC post in 2007, “it wasn’t just this position” that NAPABA helped him with, Korniczky says — “it was being in a position to get this position.”
Tse was hired this past March as general counsel of Churchill Downs Inc. (which, among other things, hosts the Kentucky Derby). He was the GC of LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A. Inc. when Churchill Downs contacted a NAPABA member, who told Tse about the job and recommended him for it. Other members knew the executive search recruiter and added their endorsements. The “credibility” of the people who supported him was a big help, Tse says: “It hasn’t been lost on me that the opportunities I get these days are the result of the trails that they blazed.”
Founded in 1988, NAPABA now represents 40,000 attorneys and 60 local bar associations. Compared to other minority bar groups, it’s the new kid on the block. The National Bar Association was started by African American civil rights pioneers in 1925 (though its membership today is no more than half that of NAPABA’s). And the Hispanic National Bar Association was launched in 1972. With 100,000 members, it’s the largest of the three.
Don Liu’s experience with NAPABA began in 1999, when he became general counsel at Ikon Office Solutions Inc., the document management company. He was surprised to learn that he was the only APA among Fortune 500 GCs (and only the second ever behind Oracle Corp.’s Ray Ocampo, who’d turned in his GC badge three years before).
When Liu spoke at his first conference that year, he found himself among what seemed like no more than a couple of dozen in-house lawyers. NAPABA didn’t even track the number, he recalls: “I thought it was a sad fact.”
He had some ideas, and so did Wilson Chu, whom he met at the conference. Chu convinced Liu to start a formal in-house committee like the partners committee that Chu headed.
The key was to get general counsel to show up. In the early days, Liu remembers, he practically had to beg other APA GCs to make an appearance. But once he lured a few, more joined. The number of in-house lawyers gradually swelled, because they all wanted to learn how those lucky leaders landed their jobs.
Three things keep them coming. NAPABA conventions tend to be unusually warm and welcoming. They offer practical advice that can help advance careers. And the networking opportunities are unparalleled.
Chu likes to talk about the three C’s that define the ethos of NAPABA: collegiality, camaraderie and non-competition. Chu acknowledges that these are not qualities generally associated with high-achieving Asian Americans. The stereotype is quite different — it’s the highly competitive straight-A student who has the social skills of a lug wrench.
Chu argues that this perception is based on a painful reality. Too many young lawyers of Asian descent are ill-equipped to build the relationships that are essential to advance in the business world. How they get that way, he says, is a result of home environments like the one described by Yale law professor Amy Chua in her recent book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”
In a widely read excerpt that ran in The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” Chua listed the rules she imposed on her two daughters. They were never allowed to have a playdate; watch TV; play computer games; attend a sleepover; participate in a school play; take up a musical instrument other than the piano or violin; or get a grade less than an A. Chua wrote that she had no qualms about forcing her children to drill for hours against their will.
Wilson Chu doesn’t doubt that Chua’s method produces results, but some are undesirable, he says. “All this focus on academics, academics, academics — how does that play out in the posteducation real world?” he asks. “Does tiger mothering produce paper tigers?” The stereotypical Asian student is smart and hardworking, but also shy, nerdy, and unassertive. In other words: in need of some postgraduate polish.
“The role we try to play at NAPABA is to provide that finishing school,” explains Chu. “Our challenge is to beat the stereotype.”
That’s where the practical advice comes in. And it’s offered in many forms. Law students are invited to attend the association’s conferences and sign up for mentoring sessions with established attorneys. Chu met with one at NAPABA’s most recent conference, held in Los Angeles last November. He recalls that the young man fidgeted, looking everywhere but at Chu. “You need to look at people when you talk to them,” Chu told him.
Paul Hirose, NAPABA’s current president and of counsel at Perkins Coie in L.A., has also spoken to law students about the way stereotypes can limit careers. “To be successful in law firms and corporate America,” he tells them, “you have to have social skills. And it’s more than just being a likable person.”
Hirose also remembers advice he received a few years ago that he shares with students today. A senior associate noticed that Hirose had a hard time accepting praise. The associate said that when Hirose told a partner, “Oh, it was nothing,” he was not only downplaying the value of what he had done, he was also rejecting the compliment, which left the partner feeling uncomfortable.
In addition to law students, the association’s conventions offer advice opportunities for lawyers at any stage of their careers. They can sign up for quick but intense one-on-one mentoring sessions; others are invited to submit their resumes for a chance to sit down with a national recruiter. Dinners that pair partners and general counsel have been a staple for years, as have private, invitation-only meetings for GCs of Fortune 1000 companies who want to share ideas.
Toni Nguyen has attended a half-dozen conventions and sampled much of this fare. Now an assistant GC at Belo Corp., a Dallas-based company that owns 20 television stations, Nguyen met with a recruiter at one who helped her change her strategy to better position herself for the opportunities she was seeking. The next day Nguyen attended an all-day workshop, led by author and executive coach Jane Hyun, that included interactive exercises designed to help the lawyers recognize cultural differences and adapt to American corporate management.
Nguyen only wishes she’d understood the value of this approach sooner. In her early years, when she was an associate at Vinson & Elkins, partners advised her to demonstrate her prowess as “a good legal technician” by maximizing her billable hours. So she ignored networking opportunities that she now believes would have been more important to her career.
Hyun, the author of “Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling” and a former vice president of human resources and talent development at JPMorgan, says that understanding cultural differences can also benefit members of the dominant culture. She compares two proverbs. “The loudest duck gets shot,” goes a common Asian saying. But according to a familiar expression in the United States, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” So what’s a lawyer to do: pipe up, or zip her lips?
The answer is that minority lawyers need to understand how the game is played in the majority culture, Hyun continues. They can’t expect the culture to adapt to them. But it may also be useful for colleagues to understand that some in their organization are operating “with a different cultural mind-set,” she adds.
One of NAPABA’s most valuable programs isn’t tethered to the convention. It links younger lawyers with more experienced mentors. Gordon Yamate, who took over leadership of the In-house Counsel Committee from Liu in 2005, says the program has given dozens of young lawyers a boost each year. The committee chair arranges a conference call to kick off the program, says Yamate, who was the general counsel of Knight-Ridder, Inc., until it merged with The McClatchy Company in 2006. And there’s a check-in call after six months.
Though the commitment is for a single year, some pairs stay in touch for much longer. After four years, Yamate still talks occasionally with his mentee, Eric Lai, who is a corporate counsel at the Automobile Club of Southern California. Their conversations never touch on confidential company business. But Lai sometimes asks about reporting requirements, says Yamate, who is now an adjunct at Santa Clara University School of Law. Or he’ll ask how Yamate resolved conflicts with colleagues. “Through the course of our conversation, ideas will come up, and you’ll think of things you didn’t think of before,” Yamate says.
Last November, Yamate was succeeded as chairman of NAPABA’s in-house committee by Javade Chaudhri, who has been general counsel of Sempra Energy in San Diego for the past eight years. Chaudhri, previously GC at Gateway Inc., has been a NAPABA member since the 1990s. “NAPABA is a place where networks can be created,” he says.
Chaudhri particularly appreciates the private sessions at NAPABA conferences just for GCs. “It’s sort of like a family where you can ask a stupid question” without feeling self-conscious, he says. Sometimes “a reality check with another general counsel can be really helpful,” he adds.
These aren’t necessarily conversations on specific topics, like Asian stereotypes. At a recent conference, Chaudhri wanted to know if his counterparts blanket every trial with in-house lawyers, even when they have experienced outside counsel. They all agreed that they do for bet-the-company cases. And if in-house lawyers are based near trial locations, most of the GCs like to make them part of the trial team. But for a small matter far from the mother ship, the consensus was that it isn’t always necessary.
NAPABA has come a long way over the years, Chaudhri says. Not only are members asked to suggest potential candidates for corporate GC posts, they often recommend individuals for federal judgeships and government agency positions. A recent example was Ivan Fong, who was general counsel at Cardinal Health Inc., when his name was forwarded to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he became GC in 2009.
Fong, whose association with NAPABA goes back to its earliest days, appreciates the support it offers. “There is a spirit of helping each other, of nurturing, of real friendship,” he says. It promotes “a safe environment in which to talk about issues that are harder to raise in a larger environment — issues like ‘How do you talk about your work?’ or ‘How do you appropriately take credit for it?’ ”
There’s still a ways to go. By all accounts, NAPABA has been remarkably free of divisions. But the vast majority of its members trace their background to East Asian countries like China, Japan, and Vietnam. Only about 20 percent have a background from South Asian nations like India and Pakistan. NAPABA doesn’t keep such statistics, precisely to avoid conflicts. The North American South Asian Bar Association, which comprises 27 chapters and about 6,000 attorneys and law students, also serves this population.
“I would love to get more South Asians involved,” says Liu. He adds that the “pipeline” looks good — three of NAPABA’s nine current officers, including its president-elect, are South Asian.
What concerns Liu more is the hit that APA lawyers took from the recession. They were the group of minority lawyers most affected by the economic downturn, according to the 2010 Diversity Scorecard (an annual survey conducted by The American Lawyer, a sibling publication of Corporate Counsel ). Last year’s Scorecard found that Asian lawyers’ representation in the nation’s biggest law firms dropped 9 percent. (No one compiles comparable statistics for in-house lawyers.)
Liu isn’t sure why big firms lost so many Asians, but he has a hunch. “Many APA lawyers are viewed as worker bees,” he says. In a downturn, “people don’t necessarily appreciate the smartest in the room — you want to be in the rainmaker category.” So the stereotype of Asians, and the way that some of them play into these perceptions, may still be holding them back.
Liu tells a story about almost getting fired in 1992. At the time he was in his first in-house job at U.S. Healthcare Inc., and he’d prepared a document for the CEO to sign. But the CEO refused because he was concerned that Liu had “missed a lot of issues.” The exec complained to the GC, Liu recalls. Others who had run afoul of the CEO had lost their jobs, so it wasn’t a matter to be taken lightly.
Had Liu been one of those lawyers who ate lunch at his desk every day to “maximize his billables,” he might not have survived, he says. But by chance he met a man in the cafeteria who became his regular lunch partner. And he wasn’t just another company employee. He turned out to be the CEO’s family doctor — who had known him for 40 years. Liu and the doctor had no professional relationship; they were merely friends. But when the doctor found out about the conflict, he went to the CEO and told him he was being “an idiot” and was going to lose the smartest lawyer he had. Liu, who learned all of this after the fact, says that’s what saved his job.
It’s good to be smart and competent, Liu adds, but that doesn’t guarantee success in the corporate world. “You need to network with everybody,” he explains. And that’s the message he wants Asian lawyers to embrace.