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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

The Massachusetts Bar Association acknowledges the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion in our legal profession for the benefits to our colleagues and clients. We have created this Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) page to support our members in an effort to develop a more just and equitable profession. This page provides information and access to various DEI resources around the commonwealth and around the country, ensuring that our members have the provisions they need to support a more inclusive legal profession, where belonging applies to us all.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Programs, Meetings & Events

Sort Date Program ID Program Date Program Time Title

DEI Spotlight: Renée M. Landers, Suffolk University Law School

Landers, Renee

Each month, the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee (DEIC) will be highlighting diverse attorneys from within our community on the DEIC web page to recognize their achievements and contributions. In honor of National Public Health Week, celebrated April 7-13, the DEIC is proud to highlight Renée M. Landers, a Suffolk University Law School professor who is known for her work in public health law and reproductive justice. 

Renée M. Landers is a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School and is the faculty director of the school’s Health and Biomedical Law Concentration and the Master of Science in Law Life Sciences program. She was a distinguished visiting fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance during her fall 2018 sabbatical leave. During spring 2025, she is serving as the Visiting McKinney Family Chair in Health Law at Indiana University Indianapolis, Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Her teaching portfolio includes health law, public health law, reproductive justice, constitutional law, administrative law, and privacy and data security law. 

A recognized leader in public law, Landers served as a speaker on the MBA’s Reproductive Justice program in October 2024, as well as a similar program organized by the Women’s Bar Association in July 2024. In November 2024, she was invited by the Princeton Conference, a prestigious annual gathering of health policy leaders, to organize a panel on the impact of abortion bans on hospital reproductive health care services and workforces. Recently, on March 29, Landers was a panelist for a program organized by the Black Law Students Association at Boston College Law School on “Healing the Gap: Exploring the contours of health equity in the Black community.” 

An elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2008, Landers is president of the NASI Board of Directors. She was a member of NASI’s study panels on “Strengthening Medicare’s Role in Reducing Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities” and on “Health Insurance Exchanges and Changing the Medicare Eligibility Age,” and co-chaired a study panel on economic security. In late 2020, she was appointed a member of the study committee examining “A Fairer and More Equitable, Cost-Effective, and Transparent System of Donor Organ Procurement, Allocation, and Distribution” for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Landers is also a member of the Health Equity Compact, an organization of over 80 leaders of color across a diverse set of Massachusetts organizations — including hospitals, health centers, payers, academic institutions and public health — to advance health equity in Massachusetts. 

Landers is the author of articles on the potential for Massachusetts health care reform initiatives to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care, the role of social insurance programs in mitigating economic disparity during the COVID-19 pandemic, and aspects of the Affordable Care Act. In addition to health care, Landers has written on diversity in the legal profession, constitutional law, reproductive health care rights, administrative law, social insurance policy, and privacy, and is a regular commentator on legal developments in constitutional law, health law, and administrative law for media organizations.

As president of the Boston Bar Association in 2003-2004, Landers was the first woman of color and the first law professor to serve in that position. She co-chaired the BBA’s Task Force on Judicial Independence, which issued a report in August 2019. And in 2024, she chaired the BBA program on the Path to Legal Academia. Landers also served as chair of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association in 2016-2017. In November 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, and in 2021, she was recognized as a senior fellow, the section’s highest honor. She is part of a working group that oversees the Prospective Administrative Law Scholars (PALS) program of the section, which seeks to help lawyers from a wide variety of practice backgrounds and experiences prepare to enter legal academia. She has been a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently serves as a Senior Fellow.

She was a member of the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct and served as vice chair of the commission from 2009 to 2010. She served on the task force that drafted the revised Massachusetts Code of Judicial Conduct effective in 2016 and, until 2024, was a member of the Committee on Judicial Ethics, which advises judges on compliance with the code. Previously, she was a member of the Supreme Judicial Court’s committees studying gender bias and racial and ethnic bias in the courts. 

Prior to her work in academia, Landers worked in private practice and served as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration. Landers is a graduate of Harvard College and Boston College Law School.

 

To review past DEI Spotlights, click here.

DEI Committee

The work of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee (DEIC) is critical to the overall functioning of the MBA and all those in the legal profession. It is a great honor to be tasked with leading a phenomenal group of individuals who volunteer their time and talents to ensure that these important issues are addressed in the legal community.  

The DEIC seeks to develop, monitor, and promote diversity and inclusion initiatives to achieve a genuine, sustainable, diverse, and inclusive environment within the MBA, throughout its membership and in the legal community.

The DEIC works internally with MBA leadership, section councils, divisions and committees, as well as externally with the Supreme Judicial Court, Board of Bar Overseers, affinity bar associations, and other stakeholders to fulfill the following objectives:

  • Increase diversity, equity, and inclusion within the MBA’s membership and leadership, and within the legal profession (including within the judiciary)
  • Create strategies to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion practices generally
  • Increase awareness of inequities, systematic barriers, unacceptable behavior, and implicit/explicit bias, and experienced by members of the legal profession
  • Facilitate collaboration with, and support of, affinity bar associations
  • Encourage unity and community among all people, especially those currently and previously disenfranchised, within the legal profession.

Looking to get involved? If these goals and objectives are important to you, we are always seeking assistance and support for this work. Please reach out to the DEIC for additional information on how you can assist in ensuring a more diverse, inclusive and equitable legal profession.

Current DEI Committee Members

Affinity Bars