Reply to Biglaw-- is this even legal?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a general counsel. I hire law firms and when I was brought into this position, I saw a very strange this happen over and over again during my 20 years of working in-house. I worked with fantastic women and people of color who were talented, etc., but were slowly pushed off our matters or let go (during the brutal recession) and replaced with less competent white male attorneys, particularly at the junior partner level. We've had to end relationships because the partners the firms wanted us to use were basically empty suits. All of the work was being done by women or people of color.

A retired judge wrote about this phenomenon. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/opinion/female-lawyers-women-judges.html?smid=fb-share

I don't work with firms that do this and I make it clear that when staffing changes occur, I get veto power. When associates leave, I ask why and oftentimes have members of my staff verify (often offering to provide a personal letter of support, people suddenly are more open about how awful they were treated). We actually hired some of these people and they are thriving in our organization despite being told that they were incompetent by their firms.  I do this because the legal industry doesn't just not care about diversity -- it hates it and resents even having to be held accountable.[/quote]

That's laughable to anyone who has ever actually worked for an extended period of time in Big Law. You are a disgruntled minority who was rightfully shitcanned by his/her Big Law firm. [/quote]

First of all, I'm white. And a man.

Second, I spent several years at Wachtell. After clerking.

Third, I've known plenty of people in firms like you who have used your bigoted views to side line people's careers. It's interesting how many times I am told about a black attorney's incompetence or a woman's laziness (after years of them diligently working on matters I supervised) to find that when we hire them, they suddenly are fantastic attorneys with excellent business sense. I've had friends in DOJ and U.S. Attorney's Offices, and the SEC make the same observation. People thrive in these environment despite being drummed out of biglaw due to their incompetence.

Is it the person's incompetence or is big law the problem? My experience indicates that it's big law. They don't want diversity because that's yet another person to compete with over an ever decreasing pie. Much easier to knock out the low hanging fruit like mothers and black men. Oh, and those Asian attorneys since they lack "executive presence" and "leadership skill," right?

I can't explain why this happens, over and over again over the course of 20 years without admitting that big law is full of people who will use any competitive advantage to get ahead and stay ahead, including sexism and racism. [/quote]

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