At Cravath, we pride ourselves on our ability to deliver excellent legal services to our clients as we invest in the development of our people. We are strengthened by the unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives that each of our employees brings to our Firm. Our goal is to ensure that Cravath provides a supportive and inclusive workplace where every employee is valued and has the opportunity to succeed. We want Cravath to reflect at all levels the many communities in which we and our clients live and serve.

Faiza Saeed is our Presiding Partner, which makes us one of only a small handful of large law firms led by a woman. Our Litigation Managing Partner and Head of our Tax Department are women. Women also hold many of our key leadership positions within the Firm, including management positions for our Litigation and Tax Departments, Head of our Washington, DC Office, Hiring Partner for our Corporate Department and General Counsel of the Firm.  Our 2023 summer associate class is 51% women, 50% students of color and 11% LGBTQ+ identifying.

Cravath is a founding member of the Law Firm Antiracism Alliance, a nonprofit working to help bring about systemic change and racial equity in the law.  In addition, the Firm’s Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Peter Wilson, Jr., is a member of the board and is co-chair of the Education Working Group. 

Across the Firm, we devote substantial time and resources to ensuring diversity efforts help inform every facet of our work and culture, with particular focus on recruitment, retention and talent development. A few notable efforts are as follows:

• Our Diversity Committee sets Firmwide goals and benchmarks progress on D&I efforts. The Committee includes 21 partners, our Chief Operating Officer, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Chief Legal Talent Officer and Chief Legal Recruiting Officer.
• Our Women’s Initiative focuses on recruiting, retaining and advancing women attorneys at the Firm. Women’s Initiative programming includes monthly lunches, events by seniority and guest speaker presentations.  To promote connections while working in a hybrid environment, we formed small groups of women across seniorities that meet on a regular basis either virtually or in person.
  
  
• The Firm has African American/Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latinx, LGBTQ+ and South Asian/Middle Eastern affinity groups. Partner liaisons to each of our affinity groups serve as mentors for associates and actively seek input from members of our affinity groups. These conversations address topics ranging from future programming ideas, to Firm sponsorship opportunities and general feedback about experiences at Cravath. Each affinity group has two associate co-leads, who serve as informal resources to the group’s members and work with representatives of the Firm’s Diversity Committee to discuss and address issues that may be on the minds of affinity group members.
  
  
• D&I Initiatives range from providing opportunities for relationship-building between partners and associates and among associates themselves, to hosting guest speakers who address the importance of D&I in the legal profession as a whole. Annually, outside consultants conduct Firmwide trainings to ensure conversations around unconscious bias and the importance of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession are top of mind for our legal and administrative staff.
  
  
• We aim to hire and retain a diverse pool of law students who will grow to become the next generation of great lawyers in the profession.
  
  
• We partner with APALSA, BLSA, LaLSA, OutLaws, SALSA and women and veterans student groups to host and participate in over 50 programs on annual basis.

• We maintain our commitment to Fisk University, one of the country’s HBCUs, through our Cravath Scholars Program which provides scholarships and summer internships at Cravath to high achieving Fisk students. Our relationship with Fisk dates back to the Reconstruction era when Paul Cravath’s father co-founded the university.

• For over 20 years we have participated in the SEO Corporate Law Program. Each summer we provide two pre-law students of color with internships, enabling them to experience firm life for eight weeks before starting law school. Three of our partners are SEO alums.

• Cravath helped launch, and continues to work in partnership with, the Brooklyn School for Law & Justice (SLJ). We provide mentoring and funding to the school and its students, 99% of whom are students of color. Cravath helped form the Adams Street Foundation, a 501(c)(3) corporation that uses funding from foundations and other sources to provide enrichment programs, summer internships and educational activities for SLJ students.

Please see www.cravath.com for further information on our D&I related recruitment and retention efforts.

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP is committed to maintaining a work environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. Each individual has the right to work in a professional atmosphere that promotes equal employment opportunities and prohibits discriminatory practices, including harassment. To that end, Cravath expects that all relationships among persons in the workplace will be business-like and free of bias, prejudice and harassment.

Cravath is an equal opportunity employer. It is the policy of the Firm to ensure equal employment opportunity without harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, religion or religious belief, gender (with or without sexual conduct), gender identity/expression, color, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, genetic predisposition or carrier status, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, familial status, caregiver status, status as a victim of domestic violence, stalking, and sex offenses, sexual and reproductive health decisions, creed, military service or veteran status, citizenship status, current unemployment status or any other basis protected by Federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation. This Policy applies to recruiting, hiring, placement, promotions, training, discipline, terminations, layoffs, transfers, leaves of absence, compensation and all other terms and conditions of employment.

The Firm strictly prohibits harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, religion or religious belief, gender (with or without sexual conduct), gender identity/expression, color, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, genetic predisposition or carrier status, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, familial status, caregiver status, status as a victim of domestic violence, stalking, and sex offenses, sexual and reproductive health decisions, creed, military service or veteran status, citizenship status, current unemployment status or any other basis protected by Federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation. Employees who believe they are the subject of discrimination or harassment are encouraged to refer to the Firms Policy Against Discrimination and Harassment and to report such perceived offenses to the Committee that administers the Policy. The Firm also prohibits retaliation against any individual who reports discrimination or harassment or participates in an investigation of such reports. Appropriate disciplinary action is taken against any employee whose conduct is inconsistent with this Policy.

In 2019, Cravath and Fisk University, one of the nation’s historically black colleges and the oldest institution of higher learning in Nashville, Tennessee, announced the launch of the Cravath Scholars Program. The program, which supports high-achieving Fisk students studying across a range of disciplines, strengthens Cravath’s historical ties to the University. Scholars are supported with tuition assistance and a summer internship at Cravath, including training and mentorship opportunities. Established shortly after the end of the Civil War, Fisk University’s founders included noted abolitionist Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, whose son, Paul Drennan Cravath, would go on to become a named partner in the Firm. Erastus Cravath served as the first President of the University, a role he held for more than two decades, raising his family on the grounds of the Fisk campus. Sharing his father’s passion for the mission of the school, Paul Cravath served in various leadership roles at Fisk for 45 years.

African American/Black Affinity Group; Asian/Pacific Islander Affinity Group; Hispanic/Latinx Affinity Group; LGBTQ+ Affinity Group; South Asian Affinity Group/Middle Eastern Affinity Group; Women’s Initiative; Working Parents Group.