Saber rattling about law firm diversity hiring
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Anonymous
| My old firm did this and the person was fired in 6 months. That said, they picked someone from...I think it was Pace law school...so it's not like they even boosted someone from a reasonably good school. |
Anonymous
If that’s true they won’t have a problem. I don’t think it is true, though. In fact I think you’ll find internal emails that expressly say 1L diversity programs are intended for URM applicants. Because that’s what my T10 OCS said the firms intended. |
Anonymous
| If Tom Cotton wants to play lawyer by blathering on about litigation holds and what not, he can get a real job and stop sucking off the teat of the American taxpayer. |
Anonymous
He is a lawyer. What do you think he’s getting wrong about Title VII? |
Anonymous
Under-represented minorities doesn’t necessarily mean only racial/ethnic minorities… Anyway the firms will just add extra groups to CYA and move on. You’re not going to get reparations from being excluded from some program once upon a time when it might have been more narrowly focused… |
Anonymous
And do you want reparations, OP? You do sound like you feel quite wronged. Hmmm… |
Anonymous
| So interesting that the R’s who’ve been trying to curtail Title VII for 40 years suddenly care about it. |
Anonymous
I'm OP and you are not quoting me. I'm actually just a boring private practice lawyer concerned with our exposure. |
Anonymous
Language doesn't resolve the liability if it's actually provably a racially discriminatory program. The discussions I have seen on this topic are not ones I would want to hand over in discovery, from the perspective of a law firm. With respect to "reparations," you're suggesting there's no damages theory, I think you're wrong there too. |
Anonymous
I am a poster who said this has been known as a risk since the mid-2000s at least. I don’t blame you, and I have nothing to gain. I haven’t worked in a firm for over a decade and wish all our 1L scholarship students the best. I wasn’t wronged ever, I never applied for a 1L firm job, ever. |
Anonymous
It seems like the plan was, rely on fear of reputational harm to assume there will never be a plaintiff. Maybe wasn't such a great plan. Certainly not a plan I would suggest to a client. |
Anonymous
It's almost like they're trying to continue to enforce reputational harm in hopes it will continue to discourage plaintiffs. Which might even work. But it does seem like there's momentum. |
Anonymous
|
Don’t care about Title VII. Don’t care about the feelings of the aggrieved white kids, or the whining about systemic blah blah blah.
However, I do need competent, workhorse associates. And I’m tired of being saddled with juniors who need remedial writing courses directly out of law school, four different mentors, and monthly check-in meetings for “supportive feedback” while they’re 40% utilized and doing crap work. The DEI invincibility cloak is 100% a real thing. It is discussed regularly among partners. If this whiny little MAGA backlash helps us course correct even a little back toward sanity I’ll happily embrace it. |
Anonymous
Can you please explain the logic of this to me? Because I see my colleagues seem to feel this way, and I don't get it. Why are we not living up to the level of compliance we would recommend to our clients? |
Anonymous
My not caring is probably different from most/many others. But in a nutshell: 1. Not my job. I’m neither an employment lawyer nor the firm GC. I also have no role regarding our compliance with anything other than professional ethics in my own practice. Eye on the ball. 2. More esoteric, but I’m an old school outlier cranky libertarian who would put freedom of contract above most anything else, so don’t much care about coercive federal statutes. It’s the law of the land, fine; if it came to a vote, sure I’d vote yes someone should make sure we’re able to reasonably take the position we are complying. Which in most any sector means you do roughly what others are doing and avoid any lone wolf practices that attract attention. (One such practice would be to assert Title VII be deployed in defense of white law students.) |