Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Thurgreed:
I concur that your response is helpful. I'd like to address the points in your original response to my post.
I’ll tackle the “women” issue first, because, as I indicated, I see progress.
As to your point that law schools no longer discriminate against half the population: When I was a lad, there was no need to discriminate against women applicants.There just weren’t that many to begin with. As that changed, I think law schools have been leaders in the profession to expand opportunity, when compared to either law firms or in-house legal departments.So I’m inclined to give law schools some credit on that score.Current student demographics look fairly reasonable.
Now to the point about women being 50% of the initial work force but only 35% percent of the partners. As the billable hour became the be all and end all of law firm, some percentage of associates…particularly those who don’t see the partnership brass ring within their grasp… prefer to go in-house or some other form of employment that allows a sane life style.And here is the part where, to use your phrase, I get “anecdotal”, because I have no numbers…I would be shocked if women with children don’t exercise this option in greater numbers, and sooner than their male counterparts. As Bill Maher would say, “I can’t prove it; I just know it’s true.” Firms might be able to recapture this cohort of potential partners with high quality on-site day care facilities.
The problems for blacks trying to enter and remain in the legal profession are, in my view, much more difficult to solve. I can’t say I have much experience with the issue because when I was an associate at a firm I had no insight into the hiring process other than to note the results:Pale and male.So I should start with what law firms can do now.
Your “Path to Partnership” point about law firms wanting “legacy” wealthy associates who can generate business is valid. You also note that you inherited your major client. I can fairly assume that you worked for that client extensively. I am a consumer of law firm services with a truly staggering need and budget for those services. Over the years, smarter firms do allow the process of “inheriting” clients that you mentioned.I have seen my business handed down to younger partners who had worked on my business as associates. I can think of three major firms that have done this.Indeed, I have seen one firm hand down my business twice.I have been very satisfied with the handoffs. I agree that this is an excellent way to place associates who otherwise can’t generate their own book.Alas, in only one the major handoffs was the new engagement partner a woman, and none of the three handoffs was to a minority.
Your “Night School” talent pool. Fair point. One of the attorneys on my staff went to New York Law School.He became a District Attorney, and can try cases in his sleep. Ironically, at a point when I heldthe number three position in the legal department, the two non-New Yorkers people above me thought he went to NYU.I corrected them; we took a chance, he is now the number 2 person in the department.
Your “Raid the In-house counsel” point does not appear to me to be realistic. It works precisely the other way: People go in-house to escape Biglaw and Biglaw-wannabe life.
I cannot speak to your “rampant bias at large law firms” point because I can’t say that I have been exposed to this. Or if I have, I just didn’t notice, which is also a possibility.
So generally, yeah, I don’t have many answers.
Now:Just to be contrary:What say you to the increasing number of lawsuits alleging that Asian applicants to colleges and law schools are held to such a demonstrably higher standard as to constitute prima facie discrimination?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It is absolutely vital to have women, LGBT, and people of color in the room when these high-level conversations are taking place. We see the bullshit as it is being applied and hopefully are secure enough at the firm to call it out.

I would recommend delivering constructive criticism to associates directly and minimizing such criticism at those review meetings. I'm sure you've read the brief experiment white paper from Nextions. Confirmation bias is real, as you've just confirmed.

Yes. This kind of achievement is seen as a fluke by so many. I don't know how many times I've heard, "Wow, you're a partner? You don't look like a partner." And this isn't from non-lawyers. I brought in a $700k matter for another partner at my last firm soon before I left. That shit wasn't even mentioned in my comp conversation. Pure fluke in their eyes.

Yes. I would hope that that is part of the bare minimum efforts that firms need to undertake.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

They are always tied in to specific instances, which I'm not going to recite on the internet. But the slow down and think harder is a common issue for some of the best young associates I've seen, who are eager to crank like crazy and turn documents, work late through the night, and make people happy, but who may need to stop and chat with a tax lawyer or think about whether there is a need to consider alternative structures for a deal.



As I matured as an associate I got some very helpful reviews, especially in my early years. I have seen also tough reviews turn around and refocus a couple of older associates who had developed some bad habits along the way.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Disagree. This shit needs to be said to associates often (although, I've only had to say it to white males). And it is indeed constructive criticism.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The co-chair of our department used to be in-house at one of our biggest clients. As did one of our newest laterals. Both white men, but still.

Maybe it's less likely at bigger firms, especially where partnership means automatic big money, but in the middle part of the market it seems doable.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Partnership at BigLaw has very little to do with hard work or skills, except to the extent that those things are an indicator of whether one brings in business. There are a lot of talented lawyers out there. Given where work comes from, black attorneys are at a big disadvantage in trying to develop books of business.

It's always safer to go with the big firm. No one questions you when they screw things up.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

the best advice I've had to give over and over, is that "I know you see senior people make seemingly snap decisions. But they are basing those on your research/memos. We aren't looking for you to hurry. slow down."

But at big law I would never write any of that. It is a killer for white/black/anyone if it finds its way into a yearly review.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

In-house into firms is tough- the work one does in house is not usually the work one does at a firm. Also, what ever client relationships one develops in early firm years is completely lost once one goes in house. And you don't build any in-house, surpringingly. I've seen people come into firms from in-house thinking all those contacts they have from in-house groups will turn into big billings! it has never worked though.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Did you read a redacted version of my post?



hello 1995! how ya been?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Do you think we disagree?

I'm sure it's an evergreen point, but it might as well be said. I have spent a lot of time pushing alternatives to Big Law, and everyone says all the right things but they never quite seem to get the work.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You're last position is probably one with such stakes, it would be one of the last to move away from Mega-law. I've seen movement on many fronts.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The movement can go both ways. In my area, a number of years back, there was a concerted effort by a number of leading venture firms to move work, especially company-side work, out to lower cost firms. The same thing happened in a number of Universities doing tech transfer work. Both movements came after a couple studies had shown that legal costs were among the most rapidly rising, difficult to control costs in venture-backed companies.

But as fund and deal sizes have increased, the pendulum has shifted back some, and I'd say we're closer to the "hire the big firm to shield yourself from blame" approach than we were five years ago. (That said, a client who had recently brought in one of top people at one of the top firms to do a critical deal where they wanted to be free from blame just fired them and hired me, because they were taking blame from the big firm screwing up.)

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I've been part of a couple of raids of in-house lawyers. It works when you have patience and provide support.

The in-house attorney is often a better general counsel than the over-specialized firm attorney, has a better understanding of how business and law interrelate, and has access to a broader network of in-house attorneys than firm attorneys. But they almost always need help figuring out how to translate those advantages into business, and a couple of years to do it.

Most big-law shops don't have that patience or support network.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Well, that's good. OTOH, that's why it's so hard to become a partner at BigLaw. There is too much capacity, and a lot of the work is slowly commoditizing.

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To say it more explicitly (and in agreement with you), the written review is for the personnel file, not for giving constructive feedback. The audience is the rest of the partnership and future litigation, not the person "being reviewed."

You need continuous communication for constructive criticism.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We had a guy leave to go in house at a rival of said large client only to get reorganized out of the job and come back with visions of big billings from his old colleagues. I was part of the "team" for them, which meant when the in house lawyer was swamped or had neglected something, she'd loop me in at the last second and then complain that I hadn't fixed it. She eventually got fired after the figured out that she was the problem. I, personally, never heard from them again.

He did get some ongoing business from them, I think, but he eventually left again.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The worst possible way to bring along associates is to worry about "future litigation" in personnel decisions. Reviews should be key moments for intervening in and improving careers. The worry about future litigation is especially damaging to minorities, since white men will go overboard on the CYA if given a chance rather than focusing on helping them out.

There is always a need to coordinate messaging about what associates need to do and need to focus on among the many people with whom a good associate may work. Delivering contradictory messages doesn't help anyone.

A lot of advice happens in the trenches on small things and individual matters, but you also have to step back periodically and think about the overall direction of a career. You have to help people realize when they're going down career dead ends or how they can develop skills needed long term instead of just mastering the stuff they're thrown. When we give a truly bad review it often comes with a special coach or mentor being hired for them or assigned to them. And it's very easy for a good associate to become a profitable workaholic without a future by spending too much time serving partners and too little worried about building their own business, and a review is a chance to intervene when your partners are doing that to someone.

If I can't give a bad review to some mentees that will restrict the support available to them to improve and make partner.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You have this wrong. 35% of attorneys at firms are women. 20% of them are currently partners and it's been at that number for quite awhile. That's a significant difference.

Yes. I'm not sure why we are discussing the baseline reality for everyone. The point I'm making is that diverse and female attorneys flee law firms at way higher numbers because they do not see a future for themselves as owners and/or in firm leadership. This is borne out by the numbers.

Sure. But the real problem is how those who are in a position of power perceive those who have children. Men who have children are considered solid, grounded, and mature. Women who have children are perceived as having a shift in their priorities, a risk in that they will surely leave, and distracted. Confirmation bias comes into play when a woman leaves work early to go to a kid's play vs. when a man does the same thing. One gets, "Here we go, choosing family over work," and the other gets, "Wow, what a dedicated father." And the work, and therefore the opportunities, available to those two people differs greatly.

What's interesting now is that for millenials, diversity is a big issue for everyone. The white candidates judge the fuck out of firms on their diversity numbers and frequently ding them for poor performance. Yeah, imagine my shock.

Uh...thanks.

Not sure I understand your point. Do you need me to outline the fact that my experience is so rare that pointing out how it happened is almost completely irrelevant? Again, 1% of firm partnership is made up of black attorneys. 1%.

Which part? That it happens or that it should happen for diverse associates more than it does?

This is standard practice and the only way a firm can create institutional clients. The question is, who gets picked to inherit the work and credit?

This is where clients can make a huge difference. You can ask why more diverse attorneys and women aren't on your matters and you can request that they staff them. You can mention to the relationship partners that talented women and attorneys of color be given more work and more responsibility. When the time comes, you can ask what succession planning they have in mind and whether they have considered such-and-such in that planning. Etc.

How involved were you up until the point of the handoff on who was doing your work? Were you making calls to firm leadership to express how happy you were with the diverse associates who did your work? When you were pitched or had a meeting or went to a firm dinner or function, did you ask why there were so few women and diverse attorneys in attendance?

I'm on the hiring committee. It amazes me how people who went to second tier law schools and who made it will sit in those meetings and talk about how we can only hire from top tier schools and how there are so few candidates of color available at those schools since the competition for them is so heavy. I look at them like they're out of their fucking minds. They're not coming here. Hell, you wouldn't even hire yourself out of law school. Why is looking for talent at other schools such a big deal to these people. They're all fucking nuts.

No shit. You asked for solutions. This is one. If you wanted me to restate the current state of affairs, then what's the point of having the conversation?

If you want female and diverse talent, stop looking at lateral partners who have a book of business you like. Have your headhunters put together impressive offers to people who are rising stars at companies and who have deep connections at potential clients. Since this is where women and attorneys of color go to escape big law fairly early in their careers because they don't see opportunity, that's where the talent is. Poach them and give them attractive offers to become a part of your firm's leadership.

In the last article I posted about a safe space for white men to discuss diversity issues, there is a great quotation. "Often, when people hurt others, they want to focus on the intent, but what really matters is the impact." This is gospel. White people seem to be capable of only seeing racial issues from a perspective that revolves around intent. Disparate impact is to be explained away constantly. So ask yourself, do you not see rampant bias because you're looking for (or only see) nefarious intent?

Then read this: http://nextions.com/wp-content/uploa...per-series.pdf

And take this implicit bias (race task) test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

What do I think about it? I think white people have spent generations trying to set up a system for which they can claim that "objective" standards are the most important measures of who should be admitted to the best schools and given the most opportunity. In order to keep those spots to themselves, they segregate themselves, send their kids to the best schools where one can have a 5.0 GPA, pay a ton of money to tutors, enroll their children in test-taking courses to ensure success, institute and take advantage of a legacy system, pay tons to colleges in order to secure admission, etc. When their kids benefit from all of these advantages, they point at those who didn't have them and say, "Objectively speaking, my kid is a superior student and using any other measure for admission other than the ones we spent all this time defining is completely unfair!"

Now that Asian parents and students have mastered this criteria in such a way that they would dominate almost every single elite school in this country if the decisions were made solely based on "merit" (as defined the way white people have set it up), white people are now pissed off that Asians are now being "overrepresented." It's absolutely hilarious. Now they want to go the other way and talk about how there should be some balance when it comes to admission standards.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This is exactly right. Anything negative on an associate review is used to fuck people on comp.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I first joined a small boutique. After 3 months it merged into my first biglaw. The first set of reviews, the IP guys had no idea what the reviews were about. 1 of the 7 partners had a legit beef about the quality of my work. I'd fucked up a project for em. but i got 5 reviews saying I did sloppy work. when i asked, the other 4 pointed to the one guy's complaint. i about got fired. don't know what you mean by "co-ordinate" but I don't trust most of these guys to do that. reviews are about what each reviewer feels about work they've reviewed; not about what they've heard others say.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Sounds like you can switch up and do a bit with this budget to move diversity forward. I just got my 23 and me and I'm 1% native american and 2.3% north african. can you tell me the product areas you work in so i can conflict check?

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link is bad. repost?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Raiding in house: My point is that because a large percentage of in-house talent left the law firm life on purpose, this is not likely to be a source of people who want to return to the 2,000 plus billable hour lifestyle. I just don't see this as a practical solution. So let me offer you better one: Raid the government. Government lawyers are underpaid and they know it. Again, no statistics but I just know it's true: there is a greater percentage of minority attorneys working in all phases of government than in the private sector. In a number of specialties, green, just out of law school types go into government with the specific intent to use a revolving door. There's your talent pool of people who want to work in the private sector.

Asian lawsuits asserting discrimination: I am in general agreement with your thesis about "objective criteria." Even if not originally discriminatory, these standards have been hijacked to be exclusionary. I think at least with respect to public colleges and law schools, the plaintiffs are correct. If you allege objective criteria, it is nonsense to have quotas based on physical characteristics. The best answer to this at the high school to public university transition is to allow the top X% from every high school in the state to go to the flagship. That provides geographic, and, almost certainly, ethnic balance from the pool of applicants.

I don't have an answer for the Asian discrimination issue for private institutions. In my view, a more difficult question.

Finally, I listed your points in the order you gave them, so as not to omit anything, and to signal agreement or disagreement. No need to get your knickers in a twist.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

I think a lot of us have done this here before. Click, "I wish to proceed" and then click "Race IAT."

TM

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Sorry Hank. I have the next couple of engagements reserved for those, like me, whose dna shows a smidgen of Neanderthal. "We are a race of hairy chested men, hairy chested men..."

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

23 skidoo, daddy-o.

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Damn, man, you're darker than just swarthy, aren't you?

I think a key to good reviewing is getting people who haven't worked with someone to shut up and listen. As lawyers, we're really bad at this. But it's critical.

Best I've seen it done was my original firm, which had everyone do written reviews that included a line for how many hours and on which projects the associate had worked for someone. If it was less than 20 hours, someone read it but other than that you weren't part of the full review. If it was more than 20 hours, it got put in the stack with others, a single reader culled through and wrote a summary of where there were themes and outliers, and then the review was given (by two partners). But it all was in writing to avoid the herd mentality.

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i am part neanderthal!!!!

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https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.V...=7&o=5&pid=1.7
For me, this is like looking in the mirror.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I've been shifting into business development for a couple companies over the past year (setting up r/e deals, projects, etc.). I'm still practicing to keep the lights on, and to work on certain of the deals, but I really, really want to stop doing the detail work. Not some of it. All of it.

The sales/consulting side is much lower stress, much more creative. Instead of nasty deadlines, you have goals. Feels more like forward progress, and that one is building something, rather than managing something, staying on top of something, and satisfying annoying personalities.

Sometimes, I think I'm unreasonable. That I'm taking another chance, when I should just resign myself to cranking hours in a time entry system for the duration. Be happy with the gig.

When I read threads like this, I feel a lot better. I don't know how anyone survives in an organization of any size made up of lawyers. Particularly in this vicious market, where the corporate push is to efficiency, and the law firm model is all about inefficiency and brutally overpriced services.

I imagine a lot of people have this thought: "I can't live the rest of my life looking for downsides to things and warning people about them. I want to be the guy looking for the upside, and leave someone else to search for the pitfalls."

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The intellectual masturbatory aspect of practicing law is great. It is unfortunate, however, that the practice necessitates interaction with other lawyers.

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If only Atticus were here.

Because the jokes would write themselves.

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Dealing with opposing litigation counsel is surely is one of the least enjoyable things about being a lawyer. But some lawyerly wag once said that lawyers are the only people worth having a drink with. I agree. I'd rather drink with lawyers than any other gaggle of professionals. There are obvious exceptions, of course, but in general the rule holds.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Really?

First problem with drinking with lawyers: disproportionately a bunch of urban white dudes with urban white dude stories and pretty much the same education. If you go drinking with a group of politicians, especially Democratic ones, you'll get a mix of religions, races, and these days even genders, and you'll get people who vary from PhDs (occasionally) to union workers (occasionally). If you go drinking with entrepreneurs, they'll come from all over the world. I mean, lawyers are better than corporate middle management, but....

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Each profession has its own Esperanto; a language known only to the initiated. Having that common ground I think allows for a rapport.

Doctors? Engineers? Come on. Dull. Teachers can be hilarious.

The only people I enjoy drinking with as much as lawyers are soldiers. In my neck of the woods, within shouting distance of the Pentagon, many are my neighbors. About every third or fourth house near me has a soldier, sailor, airman, or vet. Most have views which are, to put it mildly, rather different from mine. But I can speak their particular Esperanto as a result of putting in two years as a draftee.

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It's kind of funny that you put soldiers in one category and engineers in another. Since West Point is basically an engineering school with live ammo, I'm not quite sure how to distinguish the two much of the time.

I love hanging out with folks in academic medicine and with engineers. Both are problem solvers.

I think soldiers are overrated as drinking companions, but journalists have lived up to expectation.

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One of my drinking habits is that I seldom drink where I can't walk home, or to my hotel. I can walk to four neighborhood clubs and belong to three of them. This permits me to be overserved without very serious consequences.

The MDs I have as neighbors are, for some reason, mostly orthopedists and dentists. At least seven of 'em. They are brilliant at what they do but not particularly socially adept. And god, at least half of them are invested in crap that will almost certainly crater. I wish I had something to sell them.

My experience with soldiers, whether it is at a platoon reunion, or with my neighbors, is that I find myself with a minority viewpoint on a goodly number of issues a good percentage of the time. I find that sharpens my perspective.

My son was an engineer before he became a lawyer. I enjoy drinking with him because he's smarter than I am and can translate his generation for me fairly easily. So I cut him some slack on the engineering thing.

The other thing I have a surplus of is political neighbors. I never drink with them. The good news is that the one under indictment had to move because of his financial and marital problems. You know his name.

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This is absolutely false. There are exceptions, but drinking with lawyers is fucking miserable. They cannot and will not talk about anything other than work--whether they're complaining about it or are desperate to discuss something they think is interesting that is surely not.

Brokers are the worst fucking people in the world. And I will leave a bar at which they congregate in numbers superior to 2. They are dumb as rocks, think they run shit, order to impress instead of to enjoy, talk at the top of their lungs, and are almost always douchey white dudes with slicked back hair. The worst.

Tech people don't bother me as they are very easily tuned out.

Blue collars are okay until the subject turns to politics at which point I almost always need to beat a quick exit.

Bar industry and service workers are the second best group to drink with--they know what they want and can hold their liquor unless they have decided it's going to be a blackout night and even then they're pretty fun.

But the number one group of workers to drink with, by far, is teachers. Those motherfuckers let loose. They are funny, uninhibited, and (often) smart.

TM

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We disagree on lawyers.

I couldn't agree more about brokers. Awful.

I tend to tune out techies as well. I put them in my "Engineer" bucket.

I don't drink with too many blue collar folks, or food and drink service people so I have no opinion.

We are in absolute agreement on teachers. My description was "hilarious." Their stories are either beer-comes-out-your-nose laugh out loud funny, tragic, or both at the same time.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think his point was having a drink with opposing counsel makes them behave better. I disagree. The worst ones seem to be looking to get some concession, thinking I'm compromised. The ones who can be herded into behaving, can be herded by talking and by example of me behaving.

The worst group I've ever been around is:

While in DC, we had a friend, whose sister worked in the CIA. The wife and I got invited to a CIA party. We knew nobody, but were always up to meet new people (back then).

Work parties seemed to follow a pattern. Early on people try to be fresh and talk about movies or music or whatever. Then, a few drinks in, talk to turns to their current file, or asshole boss. But the CIA peeps? They cannot talk about work; especially around us.

They put on a movie.