Implicit Bias and DEI: What Do We Do Now?

Science reveals that each human being has implicit biases, which are a natural result of biochemistry, our brains, and our lifetime experiences. Understanding implicit bias science enables us to work toward ensuring that our implicit biases do not manifest into explicit actions that can have significant liability outcomes. 

Our webinar, presented by Professor Bruce Adelson, will include the crucial salience of microaggressions and hostile comments, their connection to bias responses, and an analysis of how such conduct can create hostile working and learning environments in the legal community. We will use employment discrimination cases as illustrative because the facts in these decisions can be so blatantly egregious as to inform the greater discussion about bias and discrimination. We also discuss DEI commitments in the legal community and how diverse, tolerant workplaces have been conclusively proven to be more productive and more profitable than their alternatives.

Learning Objectives:

1. Review the biological and biochemical origins of implicit bias
2. Identify recommendations for identifying implicit bias and preventing its legally problematic manifestations
3. Examine how diverse, tolerant, and inclusive law offices and legal organizations produce better, more profitable outputs
4. Discuss how best to answer the rhetorical question, What Do You Do, as practicing lawyers faced with the examples used in the webinar