BJ Trach Finds Inspiration in The Language of Law

When BJ Trach joined Latham & Watkins in 2012, he was moved to do so based on the firm’s emphasis on kinship. The idea that being there to help support your colleagues was given as much currency and import as any other aspect of the job, resonated with Trach. The collegial nature and collaborative culture felt familiar to the former Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Trach was adopted into a large family, in which he was not only the only Black member of the family, but he was also the second youngest of his six siblings. He knows all about fitting into an established ecosystem. So while in 2012, like many firms at the time, there were only a few Black partners at Latham, that wasn’t a deterrent for Trach. “I was very used to being the only Black person in the room, and I was taken with the idea that the firm was driven by a commitment to work well together,” says Trach.

Trach studied economics as an undergrad at Harvard. He loved school and knew he wanted to go back after getting his undergraduate degree, but wasn’t sure what he wanted to study. A quest for inspiration found Trach researching options, and visiting different types of schools. While visiting law schools in particular, he noticed something unique, something that deeply impacted him.

“I was struck by everyone who spoke – the students, faculty members, administrators. They all had this incredible clarity of speech and thought,” says Trach. “I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that was something I wanted.”

The language of law inspired him to take a leap into the legal realm. And after just a few years in private practice, Trach found himself at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, stepping into the courtroom. It was a steep learning curve for the young and fairly green lawyer, but soon enough, Trach found his footing. He found his own voice by listening to strong mentors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and, later, private practice, and always elevated his practice by embracing his team.

Mindful communication is an ethic Trach has brought with him throughout his career, and one that has permeated the culture at Latham. One of the first things Trach recalls when he joined the Diversity Leadership Committee at Latham was how critical language can be in clarifying the task at hand.

“We called ourselves the Diversity Leadership Committee, not the Diversity Committee,” Trach says. “The idea was that we were not going to be solely responsible for increasing diversity at Latham. We were going to be responsible for ensuring that leadership at every level was taking diversity into account as a strategic priority.”

Under Trach’s leadership, the issue of diversity wasn’t siphoned off to one committee to be dealt with in a vacuum. Rather, the committee was there to spearhead the firm’s DEI strategy and work with all partners and leaders to strengthen and promote Latham as a workplace where the best and brightest professionals – including those underrepresented in the legal industry – could excel and find support to become firm and industry leaders.

Trach’s direction with this initiative, along with the firm's existing ethos of camaraderie, is a big part of why Latham has seen such success in its diversity efforts. No longer the only Black person in a mostly white room, Trach has innovated strategies that have impacted change and altered that narrative for the firm – a well-earned point of pride for the accomplished attorney.

Lawdragon: Where did you grow up?

BJ Trach: I grew up in a very small town called Baldwinsville, in New York. It's about 15 miles west of Syracuse and it's a very blue-collar town. My dad was a factory worker and my mom stayed home and raised six kids. I was always a good student and I knew that I wanted to be a professional, but exactly what I wanted to do, I wasn't sure about.

LD: What brought you to law school?

Whenever I would go and visit law schools, I was struck by everyone who spoke – the students, faculty members, administrators. They all had this incredible clarity of speech and thought.

BT: My first job out of college was for the Boston Red Sox, working in the marketing department. I loved it but I knew quickly that I missed being in school and I wanted to go back. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do so I started to go and visit different types of schools to get a sense of what they might be like. Whenever I would go and visit law schools, I was struck by everyone who spoke – the students, faculty members, administrators. They all had this incredible clarity of speech and thought. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that was something I wanted. That's largely why I ended up deciding to go to law school.

LD: How did you decide to become a prosecutor?

BT: I had such a strong connection with the case method, being a litigator was what I wanted to do from the beginning. My third year in law school I wrote my law review article on criminal sentencing. And then I was out clerking on the 1st Circuit, and very similar to my decision to go to law school, I remember being struck by the lawyers who were coming from the Department of Justice and from the U.S. Attorney's Office in particular. They would come and argue, and they were uniformly excellent.

I decided while clerking that I wanted to go to a firm, do white collar work as an associate and try very hard to get to the U.S. Attorney's Office. So that's what I did. I worked at a firm in Boston for a couple years doing white collar and then got the opportunity to go to the U.S. Attorney's Office. I loved doing criminal work, but I loved trying cases the most. That's how I realized I really wanted to be a trial lawyer.

LD: What can you recall about those early days at the U.S. Attorney’s Office?

BT: It's interesting because being a prosecutor is so different from the way we practice at a large firm. You are handling the case from beginning to end and you're doing all the prep work, you're doing all the standup work – and you're doing it for the first time. I think I argued one motion in my two years as an associate before getting to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Then, once I started there, on day three I got a case and had to go to court and represent the United States of America. The learning curve is very steep.

LD: Can you recall the first case you tried?

BT: I was in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force unit. I primarily handled big, complicated drug trafficking cases. The first one, I remember working with my trial partner who had much more experience than I did, and he was a fantastic mentor to me. We won that case and that gave me the confidence that together we could accomplish what we set out to. It was a fantastic experience.

LD: What brought you back to private practice?

BT: When I went to the U.S. Attorney's Office, I always knew I would go back to private practice eventually. I always loved being in private practice. I loved collaborating with a large group of really smart, hardworking people. And I loved working with clients. I love that people come to us because they have really complicated problems that they can't solve themselves and they need our help and expertise. In fact, it’s the thing I love most about being a lawyer, and it's not something you get when you're a prosecutor.

LD: And what made you choose Latham?

BT: I got a real sense of this culture of cooperation and collaboration at Latham that worked perfectly with my personality and style. I remember from back when I was interviewing with the then-chair of the firm, Bob Dell. He told me that the most important thing I needed to understand about Latham was that if another Latham lawyer called and said they needed help, I had to treat it as though my number one client called. I just thought – that's the kind of place I want to be. I want to be at a place where the most important thing you do is support your partners. If that's how everybody thinks at the firm, then it’s a place I’d be excited to come to work every day.

If another Latham lawyer called and said they needed help, I had to treat it as though my number one client called. I just thought – that's the kind of place I want to be.

I also felt that Latham was on this incredible upward trajectory and there were a handful of firms who were really separating themselves from the pack in 2012 – I felt like Latham was in that elite group. It was really just impossible to pass up.

LD: Was diversity a factor in your decision making?

BT: Look, it certainly was. And there were not a ton at the time, but I did speak to the Black partners that were at the firm and they were extremely welcoming and had positive experiences at the firm. There were also a lot of women in senior leadership roles at the firm and I loved what I was hearing from the Executive Committee – that strengthening diversity was an enormous strategic priority for the firm. And that was absolutely the case. Latham has continued to maintain diversity as a strategic priority and has been more successful than any other firm at making strides in that. It’s one of the things I'm proudest of, being at Latham over the last 11 years.

LD: You've been such a leader in the diversity effort. Can you tell us a bit about why it’s been so successful?

BT: I believe that most partners at most firms genuinely have a desire for the firm to become more diverse and are trying to do things to make that happen. But it is really difficult and not a short-term or single-solution problem.

I think Latham has been successful in large part due to our very flat management structure. For a firm of our size, we have a relatively small Executive Committee – just nine members. And Latham has a culture of service within the firm, the expectation is that you will devote time to service of the partnership. The Executive Committee sits at the top of the firm, but the committees underneath have lots of autonomy to make decisions to help manage the firm’s strategic priorities.

Soon after I got to the firm, I was asked to be a part of the newly revamped diversity committee. We were given carte blanche from the Executive Committee to decide how we were going to do that work and we were given lots of resources to capitalize on the ideas that we had. The first thing we decided was that we were going to call ourselves the Diversity Leadership Committee, not the Diversity Committee. The idea was that we were not going to be solely responsible for diversity. We were going to be responsible for ensuring that the leadership of Latham at every level was taking diversity into account as a strategic priority. A lot of what we did was to educate people who were not on the committee, and give them the necessary tools to be successful.

LD: Brilliant. So the committee was encouraging leadership to step up and be accountable?

BT: Right. That was a critical part of the success that we've had as a committee. After a couple of years sitting on the committee, I became one of the leaders and then the Chair.

A lot of the initiatives that we have implemented within the firm were designed to ensure that we were appropriately investing in, developing, and promoting talent, including those from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds and representing a diversity of perspectives. That has led to an incredible number of internal promotions from the associate ranks to counsel and partner. So it's really that combination of strategic lateral hiring and really focused efforts at investing in the associates – such as through our Diversity Leadership Academies, our Pipeline Programs, and our Global Affinity Groups, to name just a few – that has led to the vast expansion of Black lawyers at the firm.

LD: How has the committee affected the culture at the firm?

BT: One of the things we did when we started the Diversity Leadership Committee was we realized we needed to have associates as full participants on the committee. What that gave us was a really comprehensive perspective of what the firm could be doing to better support our traditionally underrepresented associates and really create a sense of community. One of the first really big initiatives was our Diversity Leadership Academy, which I mentioned previously. Our academies are a critically important part of the Latham culture.

Among all of the amazing associates at Latham, there is this incredible engine of Black associates who have been extremely successful, who are very driven, and who have grown up with the ethos of Latham & Watkins.

We already had a Third Year Academy where all the third-year associates come together for several days of training, orientation and community building. So we added the Diversity Leadership Academy to follow immediately after Third Year Academy, where we invite all of our third year associates and also fly well over a hundred law school students in at the same time. We provide a lot of very personal panels where partners get up and talk about their path and the challenges that they had and how they overcame them. We have executive coaching and team building skills. We always have a keynote speaker. And then there’s a lot of community building, mentor opportunities, getting partners and associates and law school students together.

In my experience, oftentimes what happens when we lose talented associates, is the demands of the work and the demands of life get sufficiently difficult at certain points in people's career that they decide it’s time to make a change. What I’ve found is that if people have really strong relationships and a sense of community and belonging, they are able to power through the more difficult times and feel like this is a home for them.

LD: Absolutely, having that sense of community can really make the difference with keeping people around. And it sounds like you’re prioritizing in-person time.

BT: Yes. I mentioned our Affinity Groups; they are also open to all. And the first time we did a Black Lawyers Group retreat was 2017, then we did another one in 2019. Then Covid-19 hit and we weren't able to do in-person retreats again until last fall. We had our Black Lawyers Group retreat in Chicago. There were somewhere between 80 and 100 lawyers sitting in the room and I was scheduled to speak on a panel, and I scrapped what I had planned to say and just spoke off the cuff because I was so emotionally moved by looking around the room and seeing this incredible diversity of lawyers from all over the world. From first years to those on the verge of promotion to partners. There's virtually no other firm in the world that has this many Black lawyers in it.

LD: That’s incredible.

BT: I'm an optimistic person by nature, but sitting in that room, I have never felt more optimistic about the future of Latham & Watkins and our diversity efforts. Among all of the amazing associates at Latham, there is this incredible engine of Black associates who have been extremely successful, who are very driven, and who have grown up with the ethos of Latham & Watkins. They understand that a critical part of what we do is support the other lawyers within the firm. That's what our culture is. And they're committed to doing that and they’re real leaders. I love that about our associates, and I'm so excited to see where they take us.