Explaining why the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co stopped commissioning Bingham, general counsel Mark Roellig said: 'I think they had about 90 equity partners in their Boston office, and not a single African American was an equity partner. I think they had one Hispanic. In their Hartford office, which we also used, there wasn’t a single African American. I think they had one Asian.'

Continual challenge

Morgan Lewis has issued a statement in response: 'Diversity and inclusion are core values of Morgan Lewis that are woven into the fabric of the firm – beginning with our recruiting efforts and extending to professional and business development. Beyond the fact that we are headed by a woman, we feel fortunate to have many women lawyers, lawyers of colour (including African American lawyers) and LGBT lawyers that have spent their entire careers here and are now partners at our firm. We also partner with many clients on ways to enhance diversity within their own organisations and to increase diversity in the legal profession overall, which has long been a broader challenge. We, like other large law firms, still have work to do and continually challenge ourselves to do better.'

13 million clients

MassMutual has 13 million clients and works from 1,800 offices. Source: Bloomberg Business of Law