How did Sydney learn about Goodwin’s 1L Diversity Fellowship program and what piqued her interest?
What attracted Cerevel to Goodwin's 1L Diversity Fellowship program as a long-time client?
What was the most notable takeaway from Sydney’s experience working with Cerevel?
How has Cerevel been committed to furthering the careers of first-generation legal professionals?
What about Sydney’s 1L experience made her decide to return to Goodwin as a 2L Fellow?
Goodwin’s program prioritizes exposing young professionals to law in emerging areas like the life sciences. How does Cerevel do that for 1L Fellows?
How can the legal industry build a more diverse pipeline?
Sydney Simmons
Summer 2022 1L Diversity Fellow and Current Law Student at Washington University
Breanna Rutledge
Senior Manager of Legal, Cerevel
Scott Akamine
Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Cerevel
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My mentor at WashU pointed me to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) network where I saw that Goodwin offered a fellowship. I recognized Goodwin from my survey of law firms; its life sciences reputation stood out to me because of my interest in weaving my science background into my legal career. I thought it was unique that program participants could work with a Goodwin client. Entering law school, I had only heard about in-house work on a surface level, so it felt like a wonderful opportunity to dip my toes into that side of the business and learn how an in-house legal team works with a firm like Goodwin. I could also see that Goodwin’s investment in DEI was genuine, which was important to me. The people who interviewed me asked very thoughtful questions about my involvement and interest in DEI work, and when I asked questions in return, their answers were just as thoughtful and thorough.
Scott and Sydney in Goodwin’s Santa Monica office
When Scott and I first joined Cerevel, our legal team only consisted of a handful of people and didn’t have any established DEI systems or efforts. We reached out to our outside law connections to learn what they were doing and when we spoke to Goodwin, they told us about the 1L Diversity Fellowship program and found it was a particularly good fit for us as a smaller legal team. We like the program because students are able to get essential support during and after law school from being in Goodwin’s corner while also having the opportunity to learn what an in-house legal team at a company like Cerevel is all about. Goodwin is great at identifying students like Sydney in their first year of law school who are looking for an immersive summer experience and providing them with things like a laptop, an email address and a paycheck. Those are things that we are not as good at, given our relative scale. But what we are good at is having a differentiated view of how life sciences clients work, and we can offer that through this program to high caliber, diverse students who may not have that type of business exposure.
Hear from Breanna on the importance of experiencing the in-house side of law.
Read the transcript
Breanna Rutledge Gaining Exposure
We’re really small. The people who come in here usually have worked at other companies or been in the industry for some time. It’s not really a place where you get your first job out of law school but how do we still give people an opportunity to find out what we’re about and what this industry is about? And so working with a 1L is great, especially through Goodwin, because they have that support of a career path after law school but they also get access to us and get some understanding about what we do. Like Sydney said, one of her first questions to me was “what is in-house counsel?” I was like, “that’s a really great question!” because I could really put myself in her position, being at WashU and not knowing some things and needing to ask and have exposure.
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Gaining Exposure
It’s a tie between two things. The first would be getting to meet the legal team members and learning about their different backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking. It was eye-opening to hear about each team member’s path to Cerevel, what they do within the team, and ultimately how components of the team come together to support the company. I was able to see clearly that your legal career path doesn’t have to be the “one linear path” to Biglaw that we often hear about in order to be meaningful. Secondly, the Cerevel team included me in many of their routine discussions about DEI work in biopharmaceutical companies, the in-house arena, and the legal field broadly. Commitment to DEI work is at the core of their company, from patient service to the way they engage with Goodwin, to their outreach to young professionals. We were able to connect the Cerevel team with my alma mater, Davidson College, where they put our discussions about breaking down barriers into motion by sharing information about their experiences and entering the legal field with minority students.
I was able to see clearly that your legal career path doesn’t have to be the “one linear path” to Biglaw that we often hear about in order to be meaningful.
This is something the whole team feels passionate about since a lot of us were the first in our families to go the route of law. From personal experience, when you get to law school without much guidance, you are trying to stay above water and not necessarily thinking about the next steps surrounding questions like: Does my first summer matter? Am I making the right moves to put myself in a good position after law school? We believe it’s important to communicate with prospective and current law students about the resources out there that can help guide them on making those first steps. As a first-generation white-collar professional myself, I have learned there are many barriers in the way of making that progression from undergrad to law school and beyond. Those barriers are known to some and unknown to others, so you can assume that something is blocking a lot of professionals from matriculating through this system that the legal industry has created. At Cerevel, we want to create a level playing field for first-generation professionals by raising awareness and providing guidance. People need to know that barriers do exist and change at every stage, and just because you overcome one doesn’t mean you have any visibility or aptitude to overcome the next.
Hear from Scott on navigating structural barriers to a career in law.
Scott Akamine Uncovering Barriers
First of all, there is the known barrier of the LSAT but then you don’t realize that you have to take a course to do well on it because it’s not indicative of your intuitive knowledge. Then you realize how much it costs. Then you don’t know that there are support programs in place to help you burden those costs. So let’s just assume you get through that and you get into law school and you say I have three years to get good grades. Someone needs to tap you on the shoulder and say, “hey, if you get good grades your first year, it’s kind of more important than getting good grades your third year and these are the reasons why.” And so you’re like, “oh wow, that’s interesting.” And then “oh, by the way, if you get good grades, there’s this thing called OCI or on-campus interviewing, and that’s where you want to make a good impression in this small list of law firms.” These barriers go on and I remember even entering a big law firm, I just didn’t know what words meant. I didn’t intuitively know what an associate versus a counsel versus a partner is, and that there are multiple facets of partners and that there are different departments within the group and that even within my sub-specialty, there’s a lot of vernacular and slang and jargon. I’m like, “why are we talking about a white knight or like shapes and merger structures?” And so a lot of what we want to do is just make structural barriers known, provide our best advice as to how to potentially tackle those barriers, and do so at as many stages of the legal profession as we possibly can.
Uncovering Barriers
At the end of last summer, I had an important conversation with my grandfather about the differences between his generation and mine, particularly surrounding the opportunities he had coming out of college versus the ones I have now. Something he said that really stuck with me is that I am very fortunate to be in a position where I can choose to be in spaces that reflect my values and respect my identity, and appreciate what I bring to the table regardless of that identity. That conversation influenced my decision to return because Goodwin was that place for me. Truthfully, I was a little surprised when I got to the Santa Monica office and saw that the representation was not what I had anticipated. With that said, what I like about Goodwin is that imperfections aren’t swept under the rug. The fact was that yes, there weren’t many people who looked like me, but that reality was consistently addressed and actively recognized as something that needed to change so when someone like me joins Goodwin, they can be a part of a company that reflects their identities and values.
Hear from Sydney on Goodwin’s community and its impact on her 1L experience.
The community was something that really stood out to me. I think that there’s a lot of overlap between offices. Initially, you start with orientation, so I got to meet a lot of attorneys in Boston. I had the opportunity to go to San Francisco and then a lot of attorneys filter through the Santa Monica office. In making those connections and networking, I was able to get work on a diverse range of projects, complex transactional work, and then also really meaningful pro bono work. So I think that developing a lot of great relationships, getting a lot of great work, and learning a lot through that was really special from last summer. Going in as a 1L, I was really nervous that I would be behind. I thought all the 2Ls – they’ve definitely taken corporations and business associations, and I’m just going to be so behind, but it didn’t really feel like that at all. I think people were really willing to meet me where I was and bring me up to speed so that I could understand the transactions that I was working on and get the most out of each project that I was a part of. It was really special that people were so patient and willing to take the time to bring me up to speed and the open door policy was always very helpful because I did have a lot of questions, so just feeling very supported by the people in the Santa Monica office and across Goodwin offices in the US.
Sydney Simmons Finding Community
Finding Community
When you say to yourself, “I’m going to be a lawyer someday,” working at a place focused on developing medications and therapies for people isn’t the first thing that necessarily comes to mind. Cerevel gives 1Ls a taste of working on the client side in an area that is changing all the time. When you’re at a law firm, it is more structured with who the client is, who the assigned lawyers are, and what the goal is. I think what’s unique about the life sciences industry is that we still have our internal clients while serving our primary client first and foremost, which is the patient. Regardless of industry, practicing law at a company versus at a law firm is a different experience. I think just knowing there’s an alternative path for you with multiple entry points and ways to practice is empowering. If we can remove some of the blinders around the full expanse of how you can leverage your legal degree, then that will make all the more difference.
Hear from Scott on how diversity of thought achieves better patient outcomes.
Scott Akamine Expanding Talent
We are looking for diversity of thought, not because it looks good on a piece of paper, but because it gets the best outcomes for patients. As we are going to grow as a company and as we are going to grow as a department, if that funnel of talented individuals with diverse experiences and their backgrounds is not being brought up through the traditional system of undergraduate to law school to law firm to in-house job, then we are going to be limited in the talent pool that we have to create really good outcomes for patients, and so we are committed to investing in that.
I think what’s unique about the life sciences industry is that we still have our internal clients while serving our primary client first and foremost, which is the patient.
Expanding Talent
Scott touched on some of the big takeaways in this area, which center on the spoken and unspoken barriers to an education and a career in law that the industry can work to break down. I think there should be more dissemination of knowledge because there is so little known about the different ways you can effectively use a legal education. It’s about helping people to understand the beast that is law school and the beast that is a legal career. Additionally, part of the industry’s efforts must be focused on getting people from minority backgrounds into rooms where they can hold that space for others like them and show young professionals that a career path in this industry is accessible. I think the profession is doing a great job of supporting diverse students and professionals who have selected into the process and fought through the initial psychological and structural barriers of our industry. What we are not doing is recognizing, as Sydney calls it, “the beast” that is the profession of law. Many people are self-selecting out before we can ever find them, and I think we’re missing the plot of how to make this an accessible profession for people who are on the fence. We can, and need to, do a better job of proactively finding these students and providing the information and answers to questions they didn’t know they even had.
Part of the industry’s efforts must be focused on getting people from minority backgrounds into rooms where they can hold that space for others like them and show young professionals that a career path in this industry is accessible.
