How do you add diversity?

[crazy canuck]

Some lawyer at a small shop away from downtown might be twice the lawyer you are even in your specialized area, but doesn't have all those other factors.  And there'd be almost no way for the client to know.

Since most of my clients are nearer to those small shops then they are to me I am pretty sure that if a more local lawyer was twice the lawyer I am then I would be out of business.  Fact is a lot of my business comes from referrals from those local lawyers who realize they are way out of their depth on particular issues.  Just as I refer out to lawyers who I know are very good in a particular area when I am out of my depth.

[crazy canuck]

I do not doubt the importance of salesmanship. You are I think underrating merit. Salesmanship only gets you so far - it will not retain sophisticated business clients who can well understand the quality of product they receive, as they see the results and the impact over months and years.

I would go further.  I am unware of any clients I have who I obtained through any salesmenship.  My area of practice is fairly narrow and people come to me when their regular lawyers are not able to deal with the issues - Much like you.

If I had to depend on salesmenship for any part of my income I would be looking for another line of work for sure.

[alfred russel]

I'm would bet that the same article could be written in the US.

My point was that your largest law firms serving the largest clients are going to have diversity initiatives, and there will be clients that expect them. One of those law firms showing up at NYU to recruit isn't going to be happy if all it gets are a bunch of white guys, when that means it is going to have to report to its clients in a few years that it is a 90% white male law firm.

A smaller firm--even one with more than 21 lawyers--may not have any incentive to care.

[citizen k]

How do you add diversity?
By subtracting unity.

[Martinus]

I think some of you guys have a too-idealistic perfect-world type of view when it comes to the decision-making process of a client choosing a lawyer.

Expertise is only one aspect of this, and often not the most important (and certainly not more important than all other aspects combined).

1. Many clients will not be able to fully appreciate the expertise or compare the expertise of two similarly experienced lawyers. Sure they can tell a newbie from a senior, but it's not always as easy to compare two similarly experienced people.

2. Most work does not require top expertise - pure and simple. Expertise does not come cheap.

3. A small boutique-style lawfirm specializing in some area may have a better expertise than a big generalistic lawfirm. But many clients will choose the latter simply because the latter has a bigger insurance coverage.

4. As a corollary to 4 above, for many clients, people making the choice are not CEOs, but people lower in the food chain (e.g. head of legal department or the like); as such they are more likely to choose a lawfirm that is "safe" (big insurance, big name overall) than one that has better experts for the specific job because in the former case they can do a better job at CYA if something goes wrong.

5. Most clients looking for an expert will look to various rankings. Many rankings are based on peer opinion rather than client opinion. Think why it can go wrong.

[Ed Anger]

I went for the jew lawyer.

[alfred russel]

I went for the jew lawyer.

Did you win the paternity suit?

[Ed Anger]

I went for the jew lawyer.

Did you win the paternity suit?

whaaaa?

[The Minsky Moment]

Of course. But lawyers who work for companies must still do stuff like provide legal opinions on situations - which are either helpful and correct, or not.

Yes but it is very difficult for a client ex ante to assess the quality of transactional work, unless they are very sophisticated.  Often the only way to find out the quality of the work is years later if someone sues.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't doubt that some large US firms face this kind of pressure (though again, how much besides lip service is paid to it, I dunno).

It is a significant issue in recruiting.  Most US firms compete hard for the strongest "diverse" candidates and try to play up their record on diversity to attract recruits in the first place.

Most clients realistically don't care that much, but some do, and a few care quite a bit.

Also as a practical matter, if you have a jury case where the jury has a particular ethnic or gender makeup or certain key jurors with such a makeup, it can be useful to have someone with an active role on a trial team that matches.

[Malthus]

I'm would bet that the same article could be written in the US.

My point was that your largest law firms serving the largest clients are going to have diversity initiatives, and there will be clients that expect them. One of those law firms showing up at NYU to recruit isn't going to be happy if all it gets are a bunch of white guys, when that means it is going to have to report to its clients in a few years that it is a 90% white male law firm.

A smaller firm--even one with more than 21 lawyers--may not have any incentive to care.

It would seem that it would *not* have been written in the US. You tell me that big firms care about diversity there, and I have no reason to doubt you.

The article states flat out that the biggest Canadian law firms *don't* collect "diversity" info and most don't even have a written policy (though in theory they are required to do so to act as a federal agent). Obviously, clients here don't require such info; if they did, the firms would of necessity collect it.

What we have here is a difference in the practice. For whatever reason, the "culture" of seriously requiring diversity reporting does not exist here in Canada. 

[Admiral Yi]

What is Canadian policy on school admissions for minorities and women?

[Rasputin]

So, at Law Review Orientation, the Diversity Committee gave us a discussion of what they do, and how. Essentially they pick X number of students in the top half of the class for Law Review based on race, gender, socioeconomic background, nationality, academic background, sexual orientation, etc. etc.

Wow; this law review must suck. Picking editors and subciters based upon visual ethnicity from people ranked as low as the top half of their class, instead of merit selection?


This is insane. Why not just select the hottest 1ls to law review? It will still create visual diversity (at least in contrast to the typical unshaven unkempt bespectacled white male 20 something editor) and can't achieve much worse of substantive outcome.

[Malthus]

Of course. But lawyers who work for companies must still do stuff like provide legal opinions on situations - which are either helpful and correct, or not.

Yes but it is very difficult for a client ex ante to assess the quality of transactional work, unless they are very sophisticated.  Often the only way to find out the quality of the work is years later if someone sues.

I don't necessarily agree. The effect of much transactional work is often much more immediate, as it is passed through multiple hands - in house counsel, counsel for the other side, etc. All of whom are more than happy to raise questions, complaints or objections. Not that this prevents sleeping disasters (nothing does), but rather that routine shoddy work will eventually be obvious.

Moreover, purely transactional work is only a part. Lawyers are often called on in effect to predict the future, like seers in the ancient world - only in this case the future risks of various sorts of business acts; too many wrong predictions and you get cast into the outer void. Some predictions may take years to come true or not; others are much more immediate.

Plus, in many cases such work (at least in my field, and I suspect in some others) is subject to various forms of regulatory oversight, often in very hostile environments. The threat is not necessarily a lawsuit, but rather a regulatory complaint - often initiated by a competitor itching to throw stones in glass houses ... 

All of which means that, in many cases, shoddy lawyering will be detected relatively swiftly.

[Rasputin]

I dunno. I'm not averse to the idea of giving people from poor backgrounds a leg up. Some guy from a busted up coal mining town in Kentucky isn't gonna be as able to hack it as well as the daughter of a partner at a BigLaw firm, no?

Merit is merit. Law review is an honor and should be about putting out a quality legal product not giving a leg up in the recruiting process to those who didn't get there on merit. It's a deception on those employers who recruit at your law school and look to Law Review as a validation of academic success and legal writing proficiency.