How do you add diversity?

[crazy canuck]

Sure there are many cases in which on some specific piece of work no-one will notice incompetence or out-of-depth. But in a practice, over many pieces of work, reiterated over months - it isn't very probable that it will not be noticed.

In my area the opposite is true.  A lot of times clients are surprised to learn that what they (and their lawyers) have always been doing is exactly what is landing them in trouble.

edit:  My experience is skewed since I mainly see cases where things have gone really wong before it landed in my lap and that tends to happen when a long serious of mistakes have been made, and often repeatedly made.

[crazy canuck]

A merely average lawyer in my field is always telling clients why they can't do something. An excellent lawyer is always telling clients how they can.

I assume in both cases the lawyers are accurate; but the difference, I suggest, is great.

Same in any field.  The average advisor tells clients how things are.  The great advisor tells them how things are, how things could be, how they might get there and what risks are involved.  The truly great advisor gets them there.

[DGuller]

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

I can think of many examples to the contrary.  Good thing to, because that fact helps keep me in business.

How long does it usually take before they catch on to you?

[Barrister]

Sheesh, Malthus and CC really are having trouble with the idea that they may not, in fact, be some of the most amazing lawyers in their fields.

[crazy canuck]

Sheesh, Malthus and CC really are having trouble with the idea that they may not, in fact, be some of the most amazing lawyers in their fields.

Truth is an absolute defence.

[Malthus]

Sure there are many cases in which on some specific piece of work no-one will notice incompetence or out-of-depth. But in a practice, over many pieces of work, reiterated over months - it isn't very probable that it will not be noticed.

In my area the opposite is true.  A lot of times clients are surprised to learn that what they (and their lawyers) have always been doing is exactly what is landing them in trouble.

edit:  My experience is skewed since I mainly see cases where things have gone really wong before it landed in my lap and that tends to happen when a long serious of mistakes have been made, and often repeatedly made.

Litigators are like that. They tend to deal with the crappy lawyering of non-litigators, because crappy lawyering leads to litigation.

I do regulatory stuff; the feedback loop in my field tends to be swift. Put out an ad to physicians for a drug that isn't defensible, you don't have to wait years for trouble. More like days.

[The Minsky Moment]

Sure there are many cases in which on some specific piece of work no-one will notice incompetence or out-of-depth. But in a practice, over many pieces of work, reiterated over months - it isn't very probable that it will not be noticed.

An anecdote immediately comes to mind of a large company in the engineering sector (whose name will not be mentioned) who for years filed poorly filed patents, because the inhouse lawyer in charge either didn't know or didn't care.  This went under management radar for many years, because there can be a long lead time between patent filing and eventual litigation and disposition of cases.  But eventually it cost big team as what appeared to an impressive patent portfolio turned out to be junk.

That kind of situation is not unusual.  Some transactional lawyers acquire great reps for their understanding of substantive law and their counselling ability but can't draft worth a damn.  And a run-of-the-mill inhouse lawyer may lack the ability to see that or the time to check the work carefully.  Or you could have a great draftsman that gives lousy advice, the effects of which are not felt until years later.

Even in litigation, there are a number of people routinely recognized as leading practicioners in their field that I would not trust to litigate a traffic ticket.

There is a lot of smoke and mirrors out there . . .

[crazy canuck]

An anecdote immediately comes to mind of a large company in the engineering sector (whose name will not be mentioned) who for years filed poorly filed patents, because the inhouse lawyer in charge either didn't know or didn't care.  This went under management radar for many years, because there can be a long lead time between patent filing and eventual litigation and disposition of cases.  But eventually it cost big team as what appeared to an impressive patent portfolio turned out to be junk.

I have similar anecdotes about the use of precedent agreements that might have been valid (emphasis on the might) when they were first drafted but then in house people who didnt really understand the law or what they were doing manipulated them over the years so that by the time a dispute arose and the company actually had to rely on one of those agreements they found that all the protections they thought they had were either unenforceable or meaningless.

This gets to Malthus' point about fields of law where there is constant scrutiny and bad work is found out immediately and transactional work where, for example, most contracts are signed and never see the light of day thereafter.... unless and until there is a dispute.

[Fate]

I believe the diversity advocates (this is also the official line of our firm when it comes to promoting diversity) argue that a more diverse working environment promotes both better working relations (both inside and outside, towards clients etc. - this is in essence a "daily diversity training" so to speak - and since our clients come from different backgrounds this is useful) but also can help coming up with more creative solutions to problems (and contrary to what some of you may believe, certain areas of law especially are not resistant to stuff like creativity and innovation). Essentially the argument goes that a room full of 10 white straight males is less likely to come up with something new or creative than a room of 10 people from diverse backgrounds.

Yep, that's pretty much the core philosophy of the Cult of Diversity.  It makes you feel warm inside to imagine Diversity magically making a business run better.  Too bad it's all complete bunk.

It's not bunk for all fields. Who really wants to go serve as a doctor to primarily Blacks or Hispanic patients? History shows that this is most likely a lesser preforming Black or Hispanic student. This market place dogma Malthus is describing doesn't well serve the needs of many US citizens. However I'm sure it'd be a great system if you were a rich white Jew.

[Malthus]

It's not bunk for all fields. Who really wants to go serve as a doctor to primarily Blacks or Hispanic patients? History shows that this is most likely a lesser preforming Black or Hispanic student. This market place dogma Malthus is describing doesn't well serve the needs of many US citizens. However I'm sure it'd be a great system if you were a rich white Jew.

Yeah, all those poor Blacks and Hispanics are seriously hurting for IP, regulatory and transactional lawyers of familiar ethnicity.

[Fate]

It's not bunk for all fields. Who really wants to go serve as a doctor to primarily Blacks or Hispanic patients? History shows that this is most likely a lesser preforming Black or Hispanic student. This market place dogma Malthus is describing doesn't well serve the needs of many US citizens. However I'm sure it'd be a great system if you were a rich white Jew.

Yeah, all those poor Blacks and Hispanics are seriously hurting for IP, regulatory and transactional lawyers of familiar ethnicity.

If you and other GOPtards like derspiess had their way and eliminated affirmative action, those poor Blacks and Hispanics be hurting even more for primary care physicians.

[Barrister]

It's not bunk for all fields. Who really wants to go serve as a doctor to primarily Blacks or Hispanic patients? History shows that this is most likely a lesser preforming Black or Hispanic student. This market place dogma Malthus is describing doesn't well serve the needs of many US citizens. However I'm sure it'd be a great system if you were a rich white Jew.

Yeah, all those poor Blacks and Hispanics are seriously hurting for IP, regulatory and transactional lawyers of familiar ethnicity.

If you and other GOPtards like derspiess had their way and eliminated affirmative action, those poor Blacks and Hispanics be hurting even more for primary care physicians.

I think it'd be a far stretch to call Malthus a GOPtard.  For one he's not even American, and for two he tends to vote Liberal (although I think he came to his senses last election).

[Faeelin]

.....

First, before getting to our success, I think there are two things that we can all agree on: we are a group of conscientious, equality-minded people, and we face an uphill battle in a professional world that has only recently opened its doors to women and minorities.  The majority of tenured faculty are white men; the majority of our submissions are by white men.  We, and all of our peer journals, face the extremely difficult task of balancing our fundamental missions for promoting scholarship with our strong desire to change the demographics of the legal world we are entering.

Now, on to our success.  On our own, we have very limited tools for addressing this problem, but there is one extremely important way in which we can effect real change.  Law school hiring decisions are based in large part on the publications of candidates.  By publishing the work of young, untenured women and minorities, we shape the future legal world (I'll also include tenured at lower ranking schools where they are likely to be paid less and have higher course loads, making publication more difficult).

[crazy canuck]

If you and other GOPtards....

You are joking right.

[Malthus]

If you and other GOPtards like derspiess had their way and eliminated affirmative action, those poor Blacks and Hispanics be hurting even more for primary care physicians.

GOPtard. I like it.

I got three words for you: Canadian socialized medicare.