From the Editor

By Peter Allen
     
      Wal-Mart regularly gets trashed by critics because of its size and reach, and because its approach to big-box retail impacts everybody from local workers and competitors to large-scale suppliers. Like Lola in Damn Yankees, whatever Wal-Mart wants, Wal-Mart gets. Senior Editor Chuleenan Svetvilas reports this month that the latest item on Wal-Mart's wish list is something entirely different: increasing the diversity of the lawyers who work for the company, either in-house or outside ("In the Name of Diversity," page 22). Wal-Mart's push is coming from its general counsel, a white man by the name of Tom Mars, who heads an in-house department of more than 130 lawyers. According to Svetvilas, Mars isn't a do-gooder on a crusade. He's just looking for the best and the brightest. "He told me that when he became Wal-Mart GC in 2002, he reached out to his own network to recruit," she says. "Not surprisingly, most of those lawyers were white males. One of his in-house attorneys encouraged him to expand his networking connections by attending functions sponsored by minority bar associations, but he was too busy to attend. When he finally did-and stayed for an entire meeting-he became aware of what he had been missing. As he told me, 'I had an epiphany. I realized that the answer to our needs was the best-kept secret in America. We started to recruit more lawyers, really outstanding lawyers.' Last year 68 percent of the lawyers Mars hired were minorities. His recruiting is clearly not tokenism."
     
      In some ways, tokenism may be worse than outright exclusion: It's poisonous for everyone involved. To read about how it can chase someone out of the legal profession, see Linda Mabry's excellent essay, "The Token," on page 76.
     

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