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Business & Practice
Coca-Cola has walked away from ambitious diversity requirements on outside law
firms, which were developed by the company's previous general counsel.
George Frey/Bloomberg



COCA-COLA SCRAPS DIVERSITY REQUIREMENTS FOR OUTSIDE LAW FIRMS

By Brian Baxter

March 28, 2022, 7:52 PM
 * New general counsel says no diverse staffing mandate for law firms
 * Move came amid exit of former general counsel Bradley Gayton

Bloomberg Law News 2022-03-28T16:56:16829-04:00


COCA-COLA SCRAPS DIVERSITY REQUIREMENTS FOR OUTSIDE LAW FIRMS

By Brian Baxter 2022-03-28T15:52:00000-04:00
 *  New general counsel says no diverse staffing mandate for law firms
 *  Move came amid exit of former general counsel Bradley Gayton

The Coca-Cola Co. has officially walked away from race-based staffing
requirements for law firms doing work for the company, following blowback from
some investors and the removal of the executive who developed the plan.

The proposed requirements “have not been and are not a policy” at Coca-Cola,
general counsel Monica Howard Douglas said in a Feb. 7 letter to a group of
shareholders obtained by Bloomberg Law. The group had threatened the company
with litigation over what it called an “illegal discriminatory” policy.

The policy, announced last year by former Coca-Cola general counsel Bradley
Gayton, would have required outside law firms to staff at least 30% of new
matters with diverse attorneys. A Coca-Cola spokesman confirmed the Douglas
letter is authentic. The company declined to otherwise comment.

Coca-Cola initially indicated last year that it would pause the policy and
review it after Gayton was removed from his role. The move to cut ties with the
policy entirely comes amid a wider debate about opportunities for Black and
diverse lawyers to make inroads in the overwhelmingly White world of Big Law.

The American Civil Rights Project is among the advocacy groups that slammed
Coca-Cola’s outside counsel proposal and threatened to sue. Daniel Morenoff, the
group’s executive director, in a statement called Coca-Cola’s decision a
“face-saving measure” to walk back a policy that concerned shareholders.

“It’s amazing that neither the general counsel of a large corporate like Coke,
nor the large, prominent law firms the policy involved, seem to have considered
its direct conflict with American civil rights laws,” Morenoff said. “It’s even
more amazing that so many other sophisticated American corporations have
similarly disregarded obvious legal problems to adopt comparably ‘woke’
policies.”

Douglas, who is Black, is a longtime in-house lawyer at Coca-Cola. She was
tapped last year to take over as general counsel from Gayton, who resigned from
the role April 21, 2021, less than three months after announcing his new
guidelines.

The letter noted that while Coca-Cola is “committed to advancing equity,
diversity, and inclusion in the legal profession,” the company ultimately never
implemented the guidelines for outside lawyers set forth by Gayton last year.

Douglas didn’t respond to a request for comment. Nor did Kevin Schwartz, a
litigation partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He was copied on the
letter sent from Douglas to Morenoff and Anthony Delcollo, a Wilmington,
Del.-based litigation partner at Offit Kurman.

The letter came in response to a stockholder inspection demand under Delaware
law for access to corporate documents. The names of the Coca-Cola shareholders
represented by Morenoff and his co-counsel at Offit Kurman are redacted in the
letter.

The policy proposal, which as of Monday afternoon was still listed on
Coca-Cola’s website, would see the company implement a nonrefundable 30% hold
back on fees for firms that failed to meet its diverse staffing metrics.

That was before Coca-Cola announced that Gayton stepped down as legal chief but
would serve as a “strategic consultant” through April 2022.

Gayton didn’t respond to a request for comment about his now scrapped policy.
Coca-Cola disclosed in a proxy statement filed earlier this month that he
received more than $11 million in total compensation last year, most of which
had previously been confirmed by the company as part of his consulting
agreement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Baxter in New York at
bbaxter@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at
copfer@bloomberglaw.com; John Hughes at jhughes@bloombergindustry.com

Brian Baxter
Reporter


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Black General Counsel Reach Milestone in the Fortune 1000
Aug. 7, 2020, 9:41 AM

LAW FIRMS

 * Offit Kurman
 * Wachtell Lipton

TOPICS

 * in-house counsel
 * state corporate regulation
 * race discrimination
 * shareholder suits
 * proxy statements

COMPANIES

 * Ford Motor Co
 * Coca-Cola Co/The


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