Womble Bond Dickinson Partner Rodney Miller has been named a 2023 Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Fellow. In addition, WBD associate Afzal Karim has been chosen as a 2023 LCLD Pathfinder.

Now in its twelfth year, the LCLD Fellows Program aims to identify, train, and advance the next generation of diverse leaders in the legal profession. In the year-long Fellows Program, Fellows will have, in addition an in-person meeting, access to virtual professional development tracks that focus on the unique needs of in-house and law firm attorneys, as well as a virtual speaker series that will highlight leadership and career development.

The LCLD Pathfinder Program is designed for diverse, high-potential, early-career attorneys at LCLD Member organizations. The goal of this program is to provide these “Pathfinders” with practical tools for developing and leveraging:

  • Internal professional networks through relationship building skills;
  • Foundational leadership skills; and 
  • An understanding of career development strategies applicable to both in-house and law firm practice.

Founded in 2009, LCLD is a growing organization of more than 300 corporate chief legal officers and law firm managing partners who are personally committed to creating a more diverse and inclusive legal profession. 

Rodney Miller is a registered patent attorney with more than a decade of experience and concentrates his practice on intellectual property matters, including due diligence, licensing and transactional work, patent office post-grant review, and litigation. He has represented both public and private companies in patent, trademark and trade secret disputes, as well as counseling clients in obtaining, protecting, licensing, and enforcing intellectual property.

Afzal Karim represents clients in M&A transactions as well as various general corporate matters. His transactional experience includes representing individuals and companies in the sports and entertainment, logistics, telecom, construction, food, information technology and healthcare industries in complex business transactions.

Miller joins Womble Bond Dickinson attorneys Toni Peck (2022) Dwayne Sam (2021), Karthika Perumal (2020), Vivian Coates (2019) and Sonny Haynes (2018) as LCLD Fellows. In addition, Womble Bond Dickinson attorneys Jay Adisesh (2022), Brian Castro (2022) and Bryant Caldwell (2021) previously were named LCLD Pathfinders.