Diversity in a trial team is a must, not just a nicety.  Why? Not only because, as the articles all say "the lawyers should look like the jurors",  but because lawyers of diverse backgrounds think in a different way.  Not better or worse-just different.  And because of these differences more creative ways of handling cases present themselves. ( I still smile when I remember a young African-American associate who sang part of her closing argument to the St. Louis jury.  Needless to say, she won BIG). 

And who wants something different more than than a jury?  From having interviewed hundreds of jurors , it became pretty clear to me that they do not want to hear the same old thing from the same old kind of people.   I will never forget having dinner with one of my juries.  There were 11 women and one man on the jury.  All of the trial attorneys (except for me) were men.  The women all expressly stated "those guys [ referring to both sides] think we are stupid".  I realized that they were including me in that "we".  Ouch.  They didn't miss a trick.

Do you send a diverse trial team into a non-diverse jurisdiction (that isn't generally where lawsuits are filed, is it?)?.   I think the answer is yes.  Why?  It is my personal theory that we want to remind the jurors every single minute that our client's company is comprised of real people. We want the trial team to reflect what our clients look like.  And as far as I can tell, we don't want that to be as the Boardroom elite. Not in this climate.

It has always given me a rash walk into the courtroom and find the one black associate from a law firm sitting at counsel table looking like a "potted plant".  Does anyone think that the jury doesn't get this?