About Us
Overview
We view the world from our clients’ perspectives, helping them to lead and innovate across industries and around the globe. Because legal challenges do not exist in a vacuum, we craft tailored solutions that prioritize our clients’ overall business goals. Our focus is on building long-term collaborative relationships, and we are ranked among the nation’s most collaborative law firms by BTI Consulting Group.
Collaboration is also an important aspect of our internal culture. Our attorneys, consultants, and staff work as teams to bring forth the most creative responses to challenges and opportunities. We have created a workplace that rewards good ideas sourced from diverse thinkers. As a result, our clients benefit.
We strive to be valued advisers, and our unusual business model reflects that mindset. Instead of employing the common “pyramid model” where numerous junior lawyers support the efforts of relatively few shareholders, at Carlton Fields shareholders outnumber associates. This arrangement benefits our lawyers as well as our clients, giving them the advantage of working with legal teams particularly suited to their needs and best able to provide value.
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PRESIDENT AND CEO
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Carlton Fields offers its clients, its professionals, and all of its employees a preferred alternative to the experience they might have with any other law firm in important ways. We do not seek to emulate other firms; we strive to outperform them. We do not like to talk about innovation. We like to do it. |
Our Core Values
Service to Our Clients
We are committed to serving our clients effectively and efficiently. We endeavor as a firm to be responsive to our clients’ needs, requests, and expectations; we serve our clients with knowledge, skill, loyalty, creativity, perseverance, and care; and we seek to be conscientious in attaining our clients’ objectives in the most cost-effective manner possible. To meet these goals, we recruit and retain lawyers and staff of the highest caliber.
Professionalism and Ethics
Although we are committed to representing our clients vigorously and aggressively, we do so only within ethical bounds and in a manner consistent with the highest professional ideals.
Service to Our Communities and the Profession
Recognizing the special responsibility that attorneys bear in a democratic society, and our obligations as citizens to our communities, we expect and encourage the firm’s attorneys to participate actively in community service, pro bono representation, and professional organizations.
Appreciation of Diversity
Carlton Fields encourages and rewards exceptional performance and hard work without favoritism or prejudice based on family relationships, gender, ethnic background, or the like. The firm takes great pride in the diversity of the backgrounds and perspectives of its attorneys and staff.
Fair Compensation
We are committed to compensating all employees fairly and to providing excellent benefits.
Enjoyment of Work
We are committed to the ideal that this firm can and should be managed so that every employee will be professionally fulfilled. To achieve this goal, we endeavor to operate this firm so that all employees have the opportunity to seek and obtain challenging work and professional growth; all employees demonstrate mutual respect, courtesy, and concern; and all employees are encouraged and permitted to afford time and attention to their families and other personal priorities.
Work Ethic
The firm expects all employees to commit themselves enthusiastically to the requirements of their position, recognizing that this may require personal sacrifices from time to time.
One Firm
We are “one firm.” We place the best interests of the firm ahead of our individual interests, and we stand ready to provide assistance and support to one another at all times.
Loyalty
We value loyalty to our clients, to the firm, and to each other.
Competent, Effective Management
We are committed to operating successfully as a business, for the long-term benefit of the shareholders, their successors, all attorneys and other employees, our clients, and others whom we serve. For this reason, we endeavor to manage the firm competently and effectively, and we encourage and reward each attorney’s attainment of his or her full career potential.
Client Service Standards
Attorneys and Government Consultants
Client teams
You will have a dedicated team of attorneys, government consultants, and staff for your matters who understand your business and industry.
Upfront commitments
At the outset of each engagement, we will discuss your expectations, including your business objectives, goals, timeline, staffing, budgets, and preferred means for communicating.
Post-matter briefing
We will meet with you to discuss your experience once the matter is complete.
Client visits
We will visit you at your place of business annually at no charge.
Value above and beyond
We will provide value to you above and beyond our legal work by helping you meet your goals, challenges, and aspirations.
Professional Staff
Know our clientsWe will take steps to get to know you and your organizations to personalize our dealings with you.
Plan for visits
We will anticipate your visits, plan for them, and help personalize your visits by arranging to have your needs met before you arrive or immediately upon arrival.
Field the call
We will greet you when the attorney or government consultant you wish to see is not available, and we will offer any assistance we are able to provide.
Get the answer
We will make every effort to avoid shuttling you from person to person to get information you need.
Get updates
Our team leaders will brief us on the status of your matters, key contacts, and other expectations that you have of our firm so that we will be well-equipped to meet your needs when you contact our firm or when we send information to you.
Innovation
Client Advisory Board
We created a Client Advisory Board, comprising general counsel and CEOs of key clients across industries. The Board meets with firm management and client relationship partners to provide updates on its members’ industries, companies, concerns, and experiences with legal services. During these periodic meetings, we discuss client expectations, preferences, trends, developments, and issues on the horizon. Not surprisingly, our clients’ thoughts on “disrupters” and the impact of technology on all their industries loom large. These meetings help our firm anticipate, understand, and better serve our clients, giving us feedback on our innovations and service delivery.
In-House Counsel Forums
Our firm regularly hosts various forums for general counsel across the country built around what they tell us they want to learn and discuss. We provide cutting-edge information on best practices, emerging legal issues, regulatory enforcement priorities, cyber risks and strategies, and practical insights on enterprise risk management, professional development in in-house legal departments, diversity and inclusion, outside counsel management, and other client-identified issues. We create safe zones where our clients’ general counsel can discuss with peers the most important and sensitive issues confronting their businesses, sharing and learning best practices. We engage leading experts to conduct ideation exercises and scenario planning. Our clients consistently rank our forums among the best they attend.
These forums provide as much value to our firm as to our clients by helping us stay abreast of our clients’ top-of-mind concerns. We learn where they are most eager for our help, and the steps they are taking to address the latest challenges. We apply this learning to adapt our client service to deliver not just what we have to sell, but what clients want to buy.
Industry Focus
Our clients expect us to be experts on their industries and businesses so we can bring true value to the table from the very start in the most challenging engagements. We were an early-mover in creating industry groups and adopting an industry focus in key economic sectors we serve, requiring our professionals to learn deeply on their own time the contours, constituent elements, business drivers, legal framework, challenges, and opportunities of each of these industries. Our professionals regularly write, speak, and facilitate state-of-the-art programs in our targeted industries, providing thought leadership and guidance to industry stakeholders. This enables our firm to deliver extraordinary value and efficiencies to the clients we represent in these industry sectors.
Client Service Standards
Years ago, in our quest to determine what distinguishes best-in-class client service, we began studying hundreds of “best practices” widely discussed in the profession. We culled a list of five that our experience and discussions with clients have proven offer the greatest impact. We adopted these as our firm’s Client Service Standards to guide each of our engagements.
Through teams of tech experts, consultants, and attorneys, we create and deploy cutting-edge technology systematically and strategically to enhance the efficiency of our own operations, improve the delivery of client services, and provide the kinds of tech tools and solutions at superior value that many clients must outsource to tech firms to achieve.
We continually work to identify best practices and innovations to help us disaggregate the work we do for our clients to ensure that we can provide each component — either ourselves or through outsourcing — in the most cost-effective fashion. And we are working together year in and year out with some of the most respected tech firms in the country to explore and develop tech tools and innovations to serve our clients’ needs.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Our Commitment
DEI is a core value of our firm. DEI is more than an initiative, program, or policy. It is who we are. We strive to have a critical mass of female and diverse colleagues across our national platform so that DEI is an organic part of our law firm. We are focused on the qualitative character of our firm. We endeavor for all of our professionals to have equal, unimpeded access to all opportunities, to have a seat at the table, to be treated fairly, and to thrive at our firm for the long haul.
Our law firm embraced DEI long before there was a conventional business case for diversity — before very many businesses favored it. Now, of course, many businesses understand that we make better, more thoughtful, more informed business decisions and get better results with diverse teams. A diverse leadership team and workforce not only operate more rigorously and creatively but they better understand and reflect the needs and interests of our clients and other constituencies.
Nonetheless, two other considerations have always weighed very heavily in our calculus. First, DEI is the right thing to do, as a matter of social justice. Second, we enjoy being diverse. It enhances the depth, quality, and character of our professional relationships and experience immensely.
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Chief Diversity Officer
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Hiring and advancing diverse attorneys has been important to us as a firm since long before the legal profession recognized the business benefits of diverse teams. Our top-down commitment to diversity requires us to look beyond statistics to ensure we create an environment where all of our attorneys — and, in turn, our clients — can truly succeed. We continually assess and launch diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and our efforts have been nationally recognized. For example, the firm conducts a 360-degree review process through which our attorneys and government consultants rank their practice group leaders on factors that include how well they promote diversity — their effectiveness weighs into their compensation. |
Business Resource Groups
Our internal networking groups power initiatives that have impacts within the firm, legal profession, and our communities.
Key Contacts for Carlton Fields Business Resource Groups
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Gina A. Hough |
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Jin Liu |
Amanda Romfh Jesteadt |
Pro Bono
No Standing on the Sidelines
As both lawyers and citizens we believe in putting our time, energy, and specialized skills and knowledge to work for the people and causes that most need them. There’s much to do, and we feel fortunate to be able to pitch in through pro bono work and community service. As a charter signatory to the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge, we expect our lawyers and paralegals to devote at least 50 hours annually to pro bono work (for which we provide billable credit). Some of our most experienced lawyers set the tone, which is evident in every office, and at every level. We’ve found that our programs, policies, partnerships, and hard work reward us as well as those we serve.
Technology Services
Security. Support. Efficiency.
Technology plays a critical role in our ability to deliver superior client service. As a result, it is not enough to merely keep up with advances that improve the ways in which we protect client data, collaborate on matters across offices and with clients, analyze vast stores of data, and manage workflows and institutional knowledge to maximize efficiency. Rather, we seek to lead by investing in state-of-the-art solutions and anticipating challenges. While the tools we use continually evolve, our commitment to client service remains constant.
Information Security
Maintaining the security of our clients’ data is our highest priority. Following a rigorous certification and audit process, Carlton Fields earned ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification, the most widely adopted information security standard in the world, and the highest level of security-related accreditation a business can achieve. ISO 27001 certification is an important part of our firm’s overall security strategy, and demonstrates our commitment to investing in the technology and training necessary to protect our clients’ confidential business matters.
Litigation Support
At every stage of the litigation process, we use technology to ensure efficiency. Our attorneys and staff are trained on a wide range of user-friendly solutions that aid with tasks from early case assessment to the presentation and management of evidence at trials, arbitrations, and mediations. For example, our in-house resources include document review platform Relativity, the leader in e-discovery software. Our suite of state-of-the-art solutions rely on advances such as artificial intelligence (AI) to increase reliability, save time, and reduce client costs.
Transactional Support
The ability to collaborate in a secure environment is critical to legal and client teams engaged in transactions, and to those conducting due diligence related to financings. To assist with these and other transaction-related tasks, we use a range of solutions including the latest AI-based advanced document technology, virtual data rooms, extranets, client portals and dashboards, and file sharing tools. As a result, our attorneys can maximize their efficiency to provide savings for our clients.