Pressure from corporate and institutional clients is forcing US law firms to recruit increasingly diverse workforces, a leading Seattle-based lawyer told conference delegates.

Jayanne Hino, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, said her firm's clients were adamant 'that it is important that we have diversity amongst our attorneys'.

And she encouraged law firms to take the same approach when dealing with their suppliers.

'This is something corporations and law firms often overlook,' said Ms Hino.

'For example, we used a cab firm that once refused to collect one of our lawyers from an ethnically diverse area of the city.

We told them that wasn't acceptable.'

Delegates were also told that ethnic minority and women lawyers should not be treated with kid gloves by law firms attempting to retain a diverse workforce.

Muzette Hill, an in-house lawyer at Ford Motor Credit, said white male partners were frightened of being critical of women and ethnic minority junior lawyers, and that trepidation was ultimately preventing those lawyers from advancing.

Ms Hill said: 'Senior white male partners are afraid to read the riot act to women and to ethnic minority associates when they make mistakes.

One told me that his normal technique with associates who had made silly errors was to throw them onto their butts, kick them in their butts and then to offer them a hand up and give them another chance.

'It was aggressive, but it worked.

However, he said he was frightened of using that technique with women and ethnic minority lawyers.

But women and ethnic minority lawyers shouldn't be given special treatment.

They shouldn't be protected from a route to success, however tough that route may be.'

Earl Barnes, general counsel at Chicago-based Rockford Health Systems, highlighted the need to obtain senior management approval for diversity programmes.

'Organisational buy-in - getting the top people to say that it is important - is the most difficult element to achieve in attempting to create a diverse workforce,' he said.

Mr Barnes advised law firms to put a committee in place to look at diversity issues.

But he warned that it should not be made up exclusively of ethnic minority lawyers.