About IILP
Everyone has a place within IILP, and IILP includes everyone in its work.
Since its inception, IILP has focused on how to make the legal profession one where anyone with the requisite talent, aptitude, determination, discipline, and integrity, can enter it and rise as high within it as those abilities will permit. IILP’s mission has always been about inclusion, and we take pride in including everyone.
IILP is different. We don’t just research the issues—we confront them head–on— creating space for honest conversation and actionable solutions. Our work is grounded in the realities of legal practice and shaped by the belief that meaningful progress requires both courage and innovation. What sets IILP apart is our willingness to speak the uncomfortable truths, question assumptions, and push for a more inclusive profession.
We seek real change, now, and offer the model to achieve it.
Our Key Areas of Service
Projects & Programs
Research & Publications
UK and European Programming
Leadership & Community Development
Our Approach
IILP takes a real-world, common-sense approach that aims to acknowledge, understand, and address the reality of inclusion in today’s legal profession.
IILP talks about what others don’t want to talk about.
We talk about what is really on people’s minds, no matter how sensitive the issues. We appreciate the need for tactfulness, but also know that other less “politically-correct” perspectives may be valid and important and must also be addressed. We don’t stifle discussion. Rather, we encourage it, even if it’s about IILP’s own efforts.
IILP asks the hard questions.
We don’t shy away from asking the questions that need to be asked. Whether we call them gorillas or elephants, regardless their weight, if they are in the room, we acknowledge them.
IILP gets the data.
We move beyond the anecdotal. It’s not enough that everyone knows or accepts certain “truths.” We test the facts, measure them, and report them.
IILP invents and tests methodologies that will lead change.
The legal profession has not made the kind of progress in inclusion that it should. Continuing to follow the same strategies or to do more of the same types of programs while expecting different and better results wastes everyone’s time, energy and resources.
IILP includes everyone.
At IILP, our notion of inclusion is, well . . . truly inclusive. As parents and siblings to some very beloved non-human family members, we’re reminded every day that we can learn from, enjoy the company of, respect, value, and deeply care for those who may look or live differently from us. Making that same leap of understanding and compassion for one another shouldn’t be so hard, should it?
Our History
The legal profession has been tackling the lack of inclusion within itself for more than two decades. IILP represents the modern and logical progression of diversity and inclusion initiatives spanning several decades. It hopes to be a model and principle resource guiding those efforts in the 21st Century in as much as it will house the knowledge, experience, and resources required to build upon the lessons of the past, better prepare for the future, and achieve meaningful inclusion within the legal profession.
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