Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Pa and Mi had a 500% increase in third party voters. That is why Hillary is not president.

As another example in NY Johnson and Stein got 90,000 votes in 2012. They combined for 290,000 in 2016. The difference is that NY was blue enough to cover for the addled brainers.

We were apparently not blue enough. But it wasn't "Joe Sixpack." It was people who saw the two real candidates as effectively the same.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I feel like I've endorsed this post about 200 times. Truth.

Why doesn't Sebby get it yet? How thick is he? The people who got us Trump are the one's who bitch and moan about "both parties" and protest votes and such. Yes, Sebby, your vote matters, even when you throw it away.

Anyway, preach brother.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

First, thanks for the long, thoughtful response.

Yes, when pushed, you acknowledge that the rich use government to serve their self-interest. You don't seem to get that this undercuts the argument (which you described and seem to believe) that the poor should not be allowed to use government to serve their self-interest. The implication here -- and it's a fiction -- is that the rich use their control over the government in a neutral, selfless way that the poor would corrupt. "We can't let the poor into the club -- they'll eat all the pie." That pie is getting eaten already, and what we're talking about is who gets to eat it, not whether there will be any left.

That's bullshit. There's a lot of irrationality among rich and poor alike, but ordinary people are not that hard to figure out. They want ordinary things, like jobs and schools and roads and healthcare and a local sportsball team that wins more than average.

Alas, we have a two-party system that often lacks good solutions to hard problems. The Republicans are so committed to cutting taxes that they cannot offer solutions to problems which involve spending money, which is most of them. The Democrats often lack the courage of their convictions, and often struggle to propose solutions that will make a difference to ordinary people. Also, the nature of our government makes it hard to get things done, and people get frustrated with that.

There is no alternative. What you just described is a transfer. My point is what you are attributing to democracy (transfers) is not an attribute of democracy per se, but an attribute of all government. The earliest civilizations in what is now Iraq involved a lot of poor farmers and a small ruling class that grew rich taking a share of what the farmers grew. Plus ca change, plus le meme chose.

I don't think it needs to be turned upside down. I think our government is pretty excellent, in a world historical sense. Most of the time, it succeeds in resolving disputes between people without violence or oppression. (Cue Adder.) Also, it does pretty well (in a comparative sense) at enabling innovation. How many dominant European (or Japanese, or Chinese) tech companies do you see? But I do think it needs to be reformed. A government that was fairer and more egalitarian would be even better at these things. The problem, of course, is that some people are threatened by these things and want to block them (#maga).

No. What I have been saying is that the state inevitably administers transfers. As surely as night follows day, the state will do things that involve transfers. When it collects money to build a road or a school, the effects are not spread evenly. What we can hope is that the transfers are integral to state activity that fosters innovation and growth, and are not just rent-seeking (what you are concerned about with rentier capitalism). I do not think any transfer is good per se. I also do not think that pointing out that a government action involves a transfer is necessarily a reason to reject it.

It's an interesting suggestion, but that's not what you think, because there are many other things the government does that you like, like national defense, primary education, building roads, regulating financial markets, and fighting infectious diseases. Et cetera. I think some kind of universal income is a good idea, but it is not a panacea.

You are significantly changing your tune, while pretending to be reading from the same music. Even so, what you are saying is still nonsense. Just to make this more concrete, late-18th century France and England were both monarchies in which the government served the interests of a relatively small number of people who exploited everyone else. France went bankrupt, and more, and England did not, and slowly expanded the franchise.

Dude, I am responding to your argument that the poor cannot be allowed to have a voice in government that will let them advance their own interests. My point is, if they don't, everyone else will exploit them. How do you "stop the rich" other than by letting others share government power? Noblesse oblige was tried, and it didn't work. A nice theory, but the rich found too much upside in exploiting everyone else.

Agreed. (I think you're saying, we could save the banks without saving their investors.)

This is such nonsense. The government is spending that money because, for the most part, people want it spent. I personally don't believe that we need to spend as much on defense as we do. But no one gets elected to Congress on a platform of radically cutting defense spending. No one.

I disagree. Compare what happened under Obama and what is happening under Trump. The differences are real. Healthcare reform (for example) made a real difference to people. Having a black President made a real difference to people. In both directions -- Trump got elected, at least in part, because so many people were threatened by both. IMO, Trump is not going to reverse the long-term trend that the government is more egalitarian and more representative, though he's doing his worst.

I think you are truly schizophrenic on this issue, and that often leads you to climb to such a high altitude that you can say things like "The system always reverts to the default setting: Doing what the moneyed want it to do." so that you can avoid reconciling the contradictions.

Come back to Earth, Sebby. You've climbed so high here that we're losing your signal -- it's just all incoherent.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

They also want people they think are less deserving not to get those things, or things that they perceive themselves either to be paying for or not getting. Note that is is unrelated to whether they actually are paying for or getting those things.

In a world historical sense, I do not disagree. But yeah, we're still arresting black men who racist white ladies don't want in their store, so...

I actually don't agree. Or, mostly, I do not think it was possible, even if preferable. No one had the authority to impose the nationalization of a huge chunk of the financial system, nor were there ever going to be enough votes available in congress. Even if congress could eventually have been convinced to act, you cannot afford to wait in the face of a bank run. With the tools available at the time, there was no realistic other choice.

The good news is that we've put in place the right tools for next time. Oh. Wait.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think what you are trying to say is that there are people who have benefited from implicit white, male cultural hegemony and who do not want to give that up. Equality is controversial, because there are a lot of people who really like inequality because it benefits them.

Yes, I agree.

In specific instances, it was possible and the government did it. What I don't think the government appreciated at the time was the value in being clear that they were screwing the investors. AIG is an example. Taxpayers took an 80% share and made a $23 billion profit. The Obama Administration often figured that good governance would speak for itself, but that turns out to have been bad politics.

And, in other cases, the government bailed out investors while middle-class homeowners took the hits.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

While this may be true, the bigger problem is that people don't even see inequality. If I hear, "But I worked hard for what I have," from some jackass who went to private school, came from money, was given internships and starter jobs through daddy's connections, traveled the world, was a legacy at every school he ever went to, was given his first car plus the down payment on their house and didn't pay for their wedding, and who married into even more money, getting me the fuck out of your local Starbucks is going to be the least of your problems.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Those people see inequality -- i.e., their relative status -- and think it's the way things should be. "Inequality" is understood as unfairness, so they won't call it inequality, because that is a pejorative term. They think they deserve the advantages they have, and are threatened by moves to equality.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

But . . . I really did work hard for what I have.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yes. We are saying the same thing.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Matt Yglesias has a somewhat related point that seems pretty sharp:

Those are three successive tweets from April 17 which I just saw.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We need a "rate this post positively" button.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You're missing my argument. There was a time when noblesse oblige worked. I could cite endless examples of past advantaged sorts who followed the rule, "don't be a pig and wreck a good thing." Investment bank partnerships of old come to mind.

But those days are long gone. And if we want to talk about whose dick is most prominently inserted in the poor's ass, the upper middle class and affluent-but-not-rich are the real culprits I see. The rich can pay greater taxes. It's the aspirant affluent who refuse to cough an extra $3k of their $600k salary because they want to use that money to put Mackenzie Childs doorknobs through the first floor, a liposuction tune-up, or bring the nanny along on summer vacation.

Older generations did follow a "don't wreck the place" rule. Sure, you had Fricks and Rockefellers who plundered the environment and abused workers. But you also had Henry Fords (loathsome bigoted views aside) who realized the best way to sell the most cars was to allow workers to earn enough to afford them.

If you had immigrant grandparents who did alright here and were thankful for the opportunity, they probably drilled it into your head: "Treat people fairly, and don't draw attention to yourself." You hear anyone following that rule today?

What you've just described is an incurious and narrowly focused person. You are correct - the rich are often just as clueless. But never the whole household. There's always at least one person in a rich household who took advantage of educational opportunities and grasps complex issues from numerous angles. This is usually the brother or sister who runs the family business, or manages the family funds, while the rest of the kids sell real estate, broker antiques, or tinker on their horse farm.

The poor are often too harried by life, trying to simply survive, to avail themselves of educational opportunities which would give them a better grasp of the issues. Hence, they acquire the narrow view you describe.

Again, the worst class are the non-earning members of the newly affluent. The spouses and children of docs, lawyers, small business owners... These people are often amazingly, shockingly incurious. And dull as all fuck.

2.

I have never bought the argument there is always an elite that exploits everything. I think the post-war boom in this country (yes, possibly a non-reproducible aberration, for a number of reasons) demonstrated that a benign elite could simply manage things, and profit a decent bit more than everyone else, while delivering broad prosperity.

I think we need a full on revolution to stop an emerging class system that will destroy this country. You might call my affinity for the old notion of noblesse oblige classist, and perhaps it is. But that was a class system that benefited people more broadly. What we have to today is a vicious, stagnant system that makes it near impossible for talented people of modest means to reach the higher levels. This undoes the whole idea of the American Experiment.

We've allowed the merchant class to morph into a rentier class. These people know no bounds. They are your Mnuchins, your Pruitts, your [Insert everybody on Wall Street in 2008]. They're blunt, thoughtless elitists. Nihilists, really. You don't get rid of these people, or their corrosive mindsets, with government policy giving the poor more power. You get rid of them with Great Depression level crisis that shocks some decency out of politicians and business people alike. You need an extreme event the forces politicians to elevate their sense of decency over their careers and say, "Wait minute. This is not America anymore. We need to stop this. We can't destroy the environment, create massive underclasses like Brazil, run a budget indistinguishable from that of a Banana Republic, and worship consumption. this degenerate behavior does not work."

I view this as a flaw rather than a feature at the moment. The system is precluding necessary radical change.

I agree with the first half. As to the second, I don't. I think we need a political civil war. We need a giant reset.

We're going to get it one way or another. 2008 is not over. Not by any stretch.

I never said I didn't want those things. I was unclear, so I'll be clear here. When I said, "Here's money, you're on your own," I meant, "The state will continue to provide the basic necessities to qualify as a state," which include most of your list (I'd eliminate a few).

Our form of noblesse oblige worked. But it's long gone. Now we just have a Gatsbian mess.

They need to learn the lesson that comes with going too far. You think that can be delivered via the ballot box. I think we need a crisis, and one where investors are savaged, and labor's value increases radically in relation to capital's.

Exactly.

You can't always get what you want. And if you try sometimes, you should get only what we can afford.

(This version was rejected by Keith.)

I want a pony.

Trump demonstrates my point about ordinary people being seriously uninformed. (Cue Hank telling me this applies to me. I'll pre-empt that: Hank, the horse has been dead for about a month now. Put down the stick.)

I think letting any one sector acquire too much power, particularly in regard to transfers, puts a nation on a road to bankruptcy. Those who need money from the govt do it by sacking the treasury. Those who want to avoid paying money to the govt do it by sapping the Treasury of funds to pay fixed obligations.

It's ultimately all of the classes working together to demand too much. A pincer effect where the rich create rules allowing them to avoid paying money to support the lower classes and the lower classes demand increasing benefits. The govt is left with no choice but to borrow.

Touche. I went for the grand finish there. I don't even know wtf I was saying as I read it now.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm not sure the advantaged feel that way. I hear that most from modestly middle class whites. They seem to think they're entitled to transfers from the state, but immigrants and people from other cultures are not.

How'd we effectively nationalize AIG if we didn't have the authority to do so? Shit, AIG was an insurer. We trampled McCarran Ferguson to do that, no?

And we didn't have to nationalize the banks. We could have thrown them into some special receivership as a condition of the bailout. The 2008 crisis was an "ask forgiveness later rather than permission now" moment. We could have done anything we wanted, and creaming investors who deserved to lose along with the incompetents who ran those banks would have helped the bailout go through Congress. It would have sailed through on one vote rather than the two it ultimately required.

And we could have paid the Goldman pricks .10 on the dollar on their AIG CDOs, rather than the .80 they received. That was fucking criminal.

What fails needs to be left to fail or go through bankruptcy. The investors in those banks deserved to lose everything they'd invested in them. Saving their asses was an outrageous act of political favoritism. And a consequence is the cynicism you see today, manifesting itself in Trump and populism.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

They see it. They don't like to acknowledge it. They forget that working hard is easy. It's getting into the game that's hard. And it's hard because, like any concert you've been to in the past decade or so, the really good tickets are already sold to a pile of well heeled corporate insiders. Or maybe an IPO is a better example. All the early placements are already handed out to the preferred, already affluent clients. Joe Sixpack ain't getting in on Facebook early. He has to wait for the first dip to get a taste.

Nobody tells the non-connected kids life is a giant business development enterprise, and having an already deep Rolodex is worth 15 years of hard work. (And that one lucky break - meeting that life changing business connection at a party, or getting that $$$$$$$ case referral - is worth 30 years of hard work.)

"It's random, hard work guarantees little, acumen is cheap, and who you know is paramount... Hope you picked your parents well," doesn't appear in any self help literature. But that's only because we're a full of shit culture that worships Horatio Alger myths, and pretends the Actual Rules don't apply.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

first, the UAW still had to get their heards' busted by Ford goons to get workers decent work conditions. but he at least least paid decent wages and benefited because more people could buy cars, although he also dropped the price so that normal people could afford a car.

and other than the depression it worked. the UAW kept demanding a bigger share, but that, in combination with Americans in steel and electronics and everything else still resulted in a middle class getting bigger. But at some point it become vulnerable, because it relied upon Americans buying American.

By the late 70s american cars were for shit, and Japan blew the whole charade up because they sold for much less. And at some point the PA steelworker and Cali electronics worker bought a Datsun. And then UAW workers realized Japan made decent TVs.

And pretty soon, for a US manufacturer to sell stuff they had to lower costs- they beat up their workers, and moved stuff to Mexico. Take a look at what happened to wages when GM spun off Delphi.

And all the FB memes about how Reagan's tax cuts killed the middle class miss that the above happened at the same time. Of course manufacturers choose very low price foreign labor; their consumers won't buy their products otherwise. Henry Ford's workers knew better than to force such a result.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Worked for whom? Because, no.

Ford realized, correctly, that continually replacing workers was more expensive than paying them more.

Again, define "everyone else." Because, again, no.

And to the extent that the white world followed the pattern you suggest, I think you're missing just how much all of that was about staving off the reds. We don't need a revolution. We need a credible threat of one.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This is a distinction without a difference.

It's strange how this became a popular opinion immediately after definitive proof that it's a fucking horrible idea. We let Lehman fail and it started the biggest bank run in generations, which in turn created other banks (and others) who were insolvent on paper pretty much entirely because of the panic (i.e., they held assets that were worthless at the time but proved not to be entirely worthless). We should not do that again, even if we need a way to wind down a Lehman without straight up bailing it out.

And, actually, we had a way except that the Treasury secretary decided to try your way instead of further twisting arms to get someone to absorb Lehman and avoid the collapse.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The "I don't see it" and "I see it but it helps me" are often tough to separate.

I've just been engaged in a debate over maternity/paternity leave policies in an organization that has had trouble attracting women employees, for example, and while there is an abstract acknowledgement of the problem, an effort to address it that requires expenditure (or effort) just leads to a barrage of complaints. Sitting in on a lot of boards, there is a completely different approach to these issues when you have a board with women (those boards often see benefits as problems to solve to maximize value) and a board that is all men (which often see benefits, especially relating to childcare and healthcare, just as costs to minimize).

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Ty's point on overt racism being a thing in the new conservatism is also right on point.

Also, I think the lack of forward movement on issues of both race and gender over the last generation is notable (with the sole exception of LGBT issues, where it has been a generation of great progress). Fundamentally, our kids are entering a workforce over the next decade or so that looks an awful lot like the workforce we entered, and there has not been a generation that has said that since the generation that killed reconstruction.

But if you look at minority and women partners in law firms, for example, there has just not been much progress.

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GGG:

Almost certainly because I am older, I cannot agree that the workplace now is pretty much the same as the one my wife, esq., and I entered in the early '70s. Less than 3% of our law school class was women. Less than 1% were black. When my wife went to work at what was then a mid-size law firm on Wall Street, there were no women partners and she was the second woman associate. Black lawyers were mythical creatures on Wall Street.

Is the profession where it should be on these issues? No. But it is far, far better than it was.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You've got 15 years on me, and I had a little career before law school, so you probably got out of law school 20 years before me.

By the time I went to school, my law school was 51% women and the firm I went to had a number of great women partners, probably 5-10% of the partnership. Today, that firm may have broken 10% women partners, but if it has, it is just barely. The years between you and I were years of great progress, the years since - meh.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If I am missing your argument (and I use that term loosely), it's because it, like a chameleon, keeps changing color to fit into your newest point. The argument we have been having is about your justification for libertarianism, that the poor cannot be trusted to sip the tasty benefits of self-governance because they will drink too much, wreck the place, and the party will be over. For that reason, the argument (implicitly) is that only the better off (let's call them "libertarians" though many aren't) should get to drink and the unwashed should get to watch them and appreciated their wisdom in limiting government to the role of protecting the private property rights ("the law in its infinite majesty respects the right of the rich and poor alike to buy the only bridge in town and charge tolls for crossing").

In that argument you have given ground and given ground, and now are explaining that while government does screw the poor, we shouldn't think about how the rich gobble the food at the table (we've moved from drinks to the meal now), but should focus on the upper middle-class and the crumbs they get. ("Not crumbs!" you're going to say. "It's a full meal. The rich aren't eating because they filled up at Masa before they came over, and they don't like the government grub." Go ahead, just say it.)

What. ever. You are still saying, OK, so the government doesn't do anything for the lumpenproletariat but it just has to be that way because if it did, they'd drink us and eat us out of house and home, and then we'd have no democracy and we'd just be sitting by the side of the road, presumably without any of the benefits of the Schumpeterian destruction that you're otherwise always insisting is going to bring the phoenix-like rebirth of our economy -- somehow letting the government help poor people will nullify all of the advantages of heightening the contradictions. It's Marx for capitalists, I guess.

It's so nice that you believe the press clippings of the older generations' plutocrats.

My grandfather, the son of a man who got off a boat from Germany and homesteaded in South Dakota, once told me that the only two institutions that had ever done anything for him in his life were the Democratic Party and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Maybe he should have spent more time reading about what a swell guy Henry Ford was.

You just told me that the poor are irrational. I then told you that they are rational and want ordinary things, not incurious or narrowly focused. That's your myopia or stereotype, not mine. I think people are mostly the same. And you don't.

When the economy is growing and every is doing better, the fact that the well off are exploiting everyone else doesn't bother people as much.

I see a society that in significant ways is more equal than it used to be, and a government that can continue that progress. I also see a conservative movement that feels threatened by the change, and is trying to stand athwart history, yelling stop. Which side are you on? Oh yeah, Gary Johnson's -- I forgot.

Voting Democrats into office would help. Just sayin'.

If you think violence and instability are better ways to resolve disagreement, it's odd that you haven't moved to Syria or Somalia. Not sure what you mean by the "system," but the point of having a government is to avoid anarchy, which turns out to involve a lot of dead-weight loss. Civil war: Not as much fun as it's cracked up to be.

What you and other libertarians don't seem to grok is that everyone has "basic necessities" that differ, and that the things that matter to you aren't "basic necessities" for other people, while things that are "basic necessities" for them aren't for you. Of course you would eliminate a few. What government does is to take everyone's wish list and find a way to reconcile all the competing interests, imperfectly for everyone.

Of course, if you announce that the things that some people need aren't "necessities" and so they don't get to submit their wish lists, then those people get screwed, relatively.

It didn't. That's why it's gone. And The Great Gatsby wasn't science fiction when written.

No they don't. The poor don't need to learn lessons about what it's like to get screwed. Please read this, because Marina Hyde is brilliant and it's totally on point. There will be a quiz later about the Self-Knowledge Impregnator, so better read it to find out.

In any crisis, the poor will be screwed most of all.

Trump is seriously uninformed and he is rich. Please don't tell me it's because he's new rich. Just resist the temptation.

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If you took this post and copied it into a blank MS Word document, it becomes an almost three and a half page doc in singled-spaced Times New Roman 12. I understand that there are many different ideas (I'm being generous) presented in Sebastian's post that need to be addressed and responded to, but I am going to suggest that there may be an undervaluing of pith here on the political issues lawyer chatting board. I know that the typical response to this sort of criticism is, "If it's too long for you, then don't read it you fucking jackass lord of the douchebags. Go fill your mouth with poison ants and shove your head up your ass." I stand by my call for pith.

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All this class talk reminds me of my biggest class faux pas-

My first big law, I got into because they bought my new IP boutique. It was seriously white shoes. I came from pretty humble beginnings, recognizing others had less, but certainly I was in the more humble background side of that firm. I don't think they'd have hired me absent the merger.

My first day there I met Lloyd. His grandfather started a major chemical company and sold it. He was head of associates. I was called into his office to learn about the firm. I sat at his desk and fell in love with his voice, and he had the best blue eyes. And he had Yale crew awards behind his desk.

And all I knew was, I was in over my head.

We brought in a patent client who was the son of a man who invented a machine that lead to a company that was sold for $X0000000000. That is, the son had the same background as Lloyd. He was starting a company to try to repeat his dad's success (crashed and burned and lost tons of money as it turned out), and he needed corporate/business help. My IP GP brought in Lloyd. To say the least the son and Lloyd had a lot in common, and saw really good people in each other.

We're working together one day, and son steps out. Lloyd says to me, "Boy, that ____ is one helluva guy!" I said, "Yeah, I wished he'd adopt me."

Turns out that isn't something one should say about one really rich kid to another really rich kid. I got a mean look from Lloyd:(:confused:

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I love your pith. Please send any you can spare.

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Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Prince covers Nothing Compares 2 U.

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Dude, that was 40 years ago! Black partners are at 1% today. The progress you're pointing to is the absolute minimum.

TM

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Not exactly news:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...upport/558674/

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

True enough, as for blacks. And I don't see an answer. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

As for women, however, progress has been dramatic in those four (plus) decades. In my first year class there were about 5 women who graduated with that class. After my two year hiatus to the military, when I returned there were about a dozen women in what was then my second year class. At present women are in a majority at the school.

I had a fellowship in my first year of school. It was named after the founder of an ultra white shoe Wall Street law firm. Today the managing partner of that firm is a woman. And while women in practice don't appear to have hit the 50% mark, two of the practice group leaders I deal with in nationwide law firms are women. On the four mega-cases I have had in the last decade, women outside counsel are involved at all levels.

When I was GC of this shop, at one point the legal department had a majority of women. Ironically, that is no longer the case; although it is a woman GC who replaced me.

So all in all, I see genuine, everyday progress for women in the practice of law.

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It is amazing to me how many articles like this get written without using words like "racist" or "misogynist".

On that particular article, it is interesting how heavily it focused on race as an issue. I have no doubt the racists were out in full force for Trump, but it's worth at least noting that the Dem's candidate was a woman and there were a shit-load of misogynists constantly focused on her.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I have plenty of thoughts. It's just that this profession is going nowhere--at least at firms. And it's because firms want it that way.

In house jobs are really the only viable route for black attorneys. The way firms are structured and what they value means that black people will make only the slowest of steps toward progress. And what is the most annoying is that firms talk all that shit about wanting to be diverse but finding no candidates(!), but they consistently ignore the problem and/or shoo it off on the black associates and partners to solve when they are the fucking issue.

Firms value business. Not surprising. But the path to business is either through family and friends connections, hustling, or being cultivated/inheriting/working on the firm's institutional business.

Obviously given the state of our country and the place black people occupy in it, it is exceedingly rare for black attorneys to have access to the types of connections which yield business.

Hustling is a fucking myth. We all know someone who we thought was out there networking and built a practice through hard work and effort, but it always turns out that whatever they bring in was through a relationship they have with a family member or friend from fucking high school or college (or one degree of separation from that scenario). That puts us back in the first bucket. (And please spare me the "But I know a guy who..." stories. I'm a corporate finance attorney. I inherited my main client and was lucky to do so. If you think I can go out there, meet decision makers at financial institutions, pitch them, woo them, whatever, and build a client base on my brains and hustle, you're delusional. I've done it all and the business goes to long-standing relationships amongst older white men. Period. End of story.)

So what's left? Working on institutional clients, being cultivated, and inheriting business. This is where firms should be doing most of their work. But the people with the business are not interested in bringing along black associates (and if you're a black woman, you might as well get out before your 4th year, because you have no chance). And because of how firms are run--management is meaningless because all that matters is a big book--no one with business is ever held to account on how they pick who gets the work and who gets sponsored. If firms were smart, they would make people who do the work well, but who don't have the client connections to bring in business partners too. But firms aren't smart. They're greedy and selfish. That's the business model. Black people know there's no place in the partnership ranks for them by their second year. So they flee.

So minority talent goes in house, where it's valued. And because companies have a diverse client base, they actively look to diversify their legal departments at much higher rates than firms. We are headed to a place where companies are starting to push firms to hire, retain, and promote diverse talent, but there is only so much pressure that can be exerted. I know for a fact that firms don't get business because they aren't diverse enough and they don't even know when it happens. And when you tell them, they don't believe it, don't want to believe it, or don't care because it doesn't affect their personal book (which is built on relationships between white men who don't give a fuck).

So, what are the solutions? Here are a few:

• Have a path to partnership for talented attorneys who don't have a book of business
• Look for talent in places you don't normally look (like night school)
• Raid companies for their in house talent and make strong partnership offers
• Fix the rampant bias at large law firms when it comes to who gets work and who gets brought along

Sure, there's been some progress. But I'm not sure anyone in this profession should be patting themselves on the back. Increased numbers of law school students is great, but is that really progress? Over the course of 40 years, law schools now accept applicants without actively discriminating against them such that classes represent real world demographics when it comes to women?

I see you've listed a bunch of anecdotal evidence supporting the "You've come a long way, baby" narrative. And I'm not denying that, when it comes to women, there have been some improvements. But if law school classes are now more female than male, then why is it that women only make up 35% of lawyers at law firms? And when it comes to who is actually making the money, women still only reflect 20% of law firm equity (and that hasn't changed much in awhile). Progress is stagnant and it's going to be for quite some time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/b...-partners.html

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm not sure those terms are all that helpful, since they seem to mean different things to different people. They can illuminate but sometimes like flash-bang grenades instead of spotlights.

Safe Spaces for White Men
 

I think this is an interesting idea. I worry, of course, because I know very few white men capable of guiding a discussion on diversity--especially one in which only white men are in attendance. But I like the fact that this is something that isn't driven by people of color and women. I do a lot of work in the diversity space and you can spot white men's feelings of being coerced into participation at every diversity function.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business...photo-15419898

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Point 1: Big law can't help.

My first biglaw, my entire class got turned down for partner at the last minute because "the firm wasn't doing well, and they needed to ensure that each current partner could expect a certain income." So they added a year to the track.

A bit after that a young partner gave me a list of billings from the "current partners." It was full of deadwood. Guys who once had a promising practice but now had no work and did very little. there was the problem- people who wanted "assurance" they'd be paid, when their anemic practices were the problem.

Meanwhile, my class? there were 7 of us. At first we'd been 50. Across 8 years they'd weeded us out. the associates who made it to the vote were 100% skilled and hard working. Yet they passed us over, rather than cut the comp for the real problem. BECAUSE the real problem had equity. The very clear business reality didn't matter.

I'm not looking for a boo-hoo for me- just making the point Big Law cannot change, not to keep me, and likely not to adjust to a diverse culture.

Point 2: I had no business or family connections- I'm from a lower middle class family. I tried "hustling" and got nowhere. Spent evenings at "Italian American Bar Association" meetings trying to network, only to see the dinner speaker talking about drunk driving defenses; meaning there was no possible connection there.

I have had a great career because one young woman I was friends with got shit out of my biglaw and went in house. the first chance she had to send work, she was 100% on board with helping a young lawyer; my good fortune was she picked me. then she became a pinball bouncing between several big companies and always pulling me in- For all my BS, my practice is solely because someone decided to help another young lawyer, rather than a GP.

Of course, being nice to people and "hoping someone with work picks you," isn't really a plan that can effect major social change.

So it does fall back on the firms to recognize the client base is becoming diverse, so they'd be smart to do so. But again, see Point 1.

the answer may be for in-house counsel to be willing to move away from big law and look to mid-size firms that have more ability to adjust to realities, and to look to build a firm that looks more like the clients they represent?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

First, thank you. This is really helpful stuff for thinking about and acting on.

I want to weigh in with some thoughts on "being cultivated" because it's something I've been thinking about and working on for a long time. I've tried to cultivate a lot of diverse associates over the years, as a partner at three different firms and with varying degrees of success, and one really big issue for me is that there are a lot of barriers put up when you are mentoring someone of color or a woman that are not there when mentoring white men. If I give some constructive criticism to a woman or minority (especially a minority who is black), something that is important for their development, it gets picked up and repeated over and over again. I'm reminded I said they needed to be more detail oriented, or needed to slow down a bit and think harder before they jump in, and I'm sometimes reminded of that for years after making the comment. As a result I've become very guarded in my reviews. On the other hand, if I say something positive, it gets forgotten quickly by many people unless I repeat it constantly. Also, minority candidates get criticized by people they don't work for much more than white candidates. Criticize someone who is black, just a little, and some old white guy in the room will give you an Amen, even if he's barely nodded hello to them.

I can quantify some of this. I had a top notch black associate who was bringing in north of $100K as a fifth year and bringing it in from top of the line clients with huge growth potential. A star. His work generation was regularly "put in context" in reviews. Things like people saying, Well, it's a start, but we can't tell yet if he can expand the relationships, he needs to defer more to partners brought in and they should run the matters, etc. etc. On the other hand, I regularly see more senior associates bringing in their first $20K matter getting all kinds of praise, credit and mentoring, even when it is commodity work sent in by some friend of the family. (This particular guy has since been recruited from me by a top 20 national firm, but I remain bitter.)

All this has led me to believe that finding ways to create consistent standards is very important to the cultivation effort. I know we've also got to change the attitudes of some white men, especially some of the liberals who should know better, but in the meantime imposing standards that holds every mediocre white boy to the same standards the old white guys hold women and non-white candidates to seems to be one way to even the playing field.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The only hope is from those who control the pocketbook. Of course, they largely report to CEOs and boards that are mostly white men too...

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Can't help? No, they're not interested in changing.

?

Yes. They are not interested in changing because they built a business model that rewards greed and selfishness and is based on maintaining the status quo.

This is happening. But in house legal departments are also starting to move business away from firms who don't give a shit about changing. But it is a major uphill climb because, as we both said, firms aren't going to change on their own.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The more this happens the better. It needs to happen from governmental agencies as well as corporations.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No offense, but these do not sound like constructive criticisms. Recognizing that you're describing things in general on the internet, there's a big difference between, "during the meeting with client X, you concluded Y without considering Z" is an example they can learn from. The general "slow down a bit and think harder before jumping in" sounds like "shut up."

Oh. Yeah. Reviews are not for feedback.