Growing Demand for Minority Lawyers?! Say What?

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Florida law schools are fretting drops in minority enrollment.

Scholars say more minorities need to study law at a time when many are pursuing careers in health sciences and business.

There's a growing demand for minority attorneys, as many members of the public seek lawyers in criminal and civil cases who look like them and can relate to them through cultural backgrounds and life experiences.

In addition, law firms want to diversify so they can better compete globally and build trial teams that can make effective cases before racially diverse juries.

I have little doubt that there's a real demand for attorneys with multicultural language skills. But the barrier there is purely communicative, and may actually inhibit access. It's not merely ethnic or racial.

It's really, really stupid to claim that there's a "growing demand" for a racial subset of a profession when the profession as a whole is producing a 40% excess every year without proof of abnormal consumer behavior.

I'll concede that people would prefer to be represented by people who look like him, and I'll also concede that given candidates with equal qualifications, firms in many areas would take a minority for diversity reasons.

But there's scant proof that either (1) minorities bypass legal services that they would purchase if they had a minority to fill their need or (2) minorities pay more for services by someone who looks like them. In other words, my casual observation is that the value of minority representation is greatly overvalued by the media and the academic elites who have no real conception of what actually happens at ground level. It's an ivory tower fantasy; in fact, in some cases, I would suppose minorities would want a white representative in court if they truly feel the court is prejudiced. And nevermind that a 40k-a-year "shit"law lawyer has more in common with most blue-collar minorities than an east coast elitist biglaw washout, but I digress...

The point is that there really isn't a "growing demand" unless a minority could theoretically open up shop and immediately siphon off business merely by being a minority who looks like his clientèle. Given the current legal climate, I just can't see that happening. No unsourced article premised on interviewing unnamed law school administrators about the unspoken wishes of a population can change that.

Sure, in an ideal world, the bar would reflect the population and people could choose among experienced lawyers of all racial and socioeconomic compositions to find the perfect person for them. In reality, we live in a world where experienced, competent attorneys happen to be disproportionately white and male. New entrants, minority or not, have an uphill battle going against that establishment, and consumers know the difference, or find out rather quickly. Minorities may find it easier to nab associate positions at bigger firms, but it's not like corporate clients are going to change firms because someone found a black guy to hire, which means there isn't any more job security for minorities than the white males. Both have to pull their weight. And let's not forget that minorities are coveted by most corporations if they have the right business credentials.

To me, telling minorities to give up business and healthcare to study law is nothing short of irresponsible. Healthcare has signs that it's a durable career of the future. Law will still be around, but it's the weakest and least versatile of the three areas. Any non-white/Asian minority who can score higher than a 160 and get into a top 50 school, I would encourage to go to law school if they wanted to be a lawyer and could find a reasonable tuition price. But no way, no how, should "weaker" parts of the applicant pool be heading to law school on the supposition that there's an untapped market out there that wants a minority face to represent them. For a kid who gets a 150 LSAT, minority or not, law is a bad idea. There's no two ways around it, and fantastical dreams of ivory tower six-figure dorks can't change that.

My opinion on this would change if the article actually bothered to have statistics that minorities were in demand in the labor market. Instead, it does nothing but spout admissions figures at Florida law schools, as if that really matters. Hopefully, no one will read the "growing demand" line and actually take it to mean "growing demand" in the economic sense.

Massachusetts School of Law Dean at it Again

As Matt at LSTB has pointed out, Massachusetts School of Law associate dean Michael Coyne is back with another editorial about why the ABA model of law school education sucks. I dissected one of his editorials in January, noting that while I love his jabbing-at-the-ribs spirit, I think he still falls into the myth and propaganda division on many points. And this one's no different, although he does get some points for, at some level, calling ABA law school a "scam." I'm not even sure I would go that far.

This one has a better title than the first one: Law school for the white and wealthy, and it's in a better place than the Worcester Telegram (I wonder how often he shoots these invectives to newspapers?).

The first few paragraphs are exactly the same as his previous rant, but he's added a few things. To wit:

The fact that Massachusetts School of Law charged tuition that was less than half of what ABA law schools charge (today that figure stands closer to one-third) meant it threatened the ABA's reason for its existence: ensuring high fees for lawyers by charging exorbitant admissions fees to enter its exclusive club.

If there's one thing Americans love, it's lower prices. With law schools, we have a clear case of indirect price restraints set by a centralized organization. But that doesn't necessarily lead to "ensuring high fees for lawyers." Aside from fixed costs, the undersupply or oversupply of labor is what dictates service fees. Lawyers' fees have been in a race to the bottom in the last 20 years everywhere except the high-stakes corporate law of the largest firms. Profit margins on simple, straightforward legal tasks have dropped relative to inflation while law school tuition has risen sharply. If the ABA served to ensure high fees for lawyers, it's already failed.

And low tuition isn't really a direct threat to the ABA or its existence. The MSL wouldn't be in competition with the ABA. It would force other schools to slash prices or reevaluate their curricula, but the ABA could still serve as the gatekeeper without any functional change. The problem is that MSL's potential competitors - the Suffolks and even the Boston Colleges of the world - all lobby the ABA about how crucial their accreditation standards are, sometimes with genuine concerns and sometimes as a pretext to keep prices and salaries high.

Again, love the spirit, but the reasoning needs work. Appealing to high lawyers' fees seems like little more than baseless populism that isn't necessary in villainizing the ABA.

But there's more: Coyne continued playing the race card, now with a cited authority:

As law professor Vernellia Randall, a well-known public speaker on issues of health, race and representation of African-Americans in the legal profession, has noted, "Institutional discrimination in law schools is really about maintaining the legal profession as 'The Whitest Profession.' "

After referring off-offhandedly to Jim Crow (as if someone can offhandedly refer to Jim Crow), Coyne again noted that African-American enrollment has declined. Compelling stuff on its face, but again, this needs more explanation. How do the ABA standards keep the profession abnormally white? How do you explain the decline? Is it because of the tuition or just because of the culture of law school? Is the LSAT keeping qualified and willing African-American applicants out? Without these logical connections, Coyne looks like little more than a biased polemicist.

At least he ends on a bang:

So to the ABA: Spare us the kind words and coronets. Reform our higher education system now. Allow innovative, low-cost colleges and law schools to develop. Let those schools compete on an even footing with the barons in their ivy-towered campuses who preside over schools for students to whom money does not matter. Allow the graduates of all our law schools to take every state's bar examination and compete in the marketplace. Hope, opportunity and competition are what made this country great; they can do so again.

I think the English royalty metaphor is a bit trite and strained, but it's hard to argue with the rest of it. Once we've allowed capitalism to be the reigning force in the legal profession (and we hvae), nothing should stop law school from following suit. If you're going to keep it as a "profession," keep it as a profession in all regards, including limiting entry into the market. But once professionalism's gone (and it pretty much is), there's no reason lawyers can't be trained at schools like MSL so long as they pass the licensing requirements, especially if places like MSL actually can prepare people to practice better than the casebook method used by students at other schools.

Sordid in the Steel City? Gender-Based Suits in Pittsburgh

Non-equity partner JoEllen Lyons Dillon has filed a gender equity suit against her current firm, Reed Smith, LLP. Reed Smith is the second-largest firm in Pittsburgh and has twenty-two offices across the globe. Interestingly enough, their motto is "The Business of Relationships." I think they might have taken it too literally. From the first article linked:

Attorney Samuel J. Cordes, who represents Ms. Dillon, said he found "that there is a pattern here of a male locker room, and it includes sexual favors," adding that his client didn't participate in that part of the "games guys play."...

She brought in millions of dollars of business annually, and sought a promotion from non-equity partner -- with no share in the profits -- to equity partner. She was not promoted, and after she took a few months off to have twins, her pay was "decreased almost by half" in 2009, according to the lawsuit. Then in January her pay was "reduced by another $100,000," it said, and her appeal of that decision was denied.

And then there's my favorite line in the story, which, typical for new-world journalism, comes at the very end as an afterthought:

Mr. Cordes said he would produce examples of sexual quid pro quos as the case continues.

Now, this isn't come crackpot pro se plaintiff doing this. This is a presently-working partner at BigLaw, who is both experienced and attractive enough to make the complaint pass any threshold skepticism.

Just a few blocks away, the Duquesne School of Law recently settled a discrimination, retaliation, and defamation claim with a former clinical administrator:

[She] claimed in her July lawsuit that Law School Dean Ken Gormley demoted her and cut her pay, among other things, in retaliation for her filing a sexual harassment complaint against him with the University's Affirmative Action Officer in 2006.

Now, I realize that settling a lawsuit is not an admission of liability and all that, but given that law school ethics should at least promote the appearance of propriety, I would have a hard time believing they settled a merit-less claim since, at least to me, it makes the dean look like a scum bucket, which I'm sure helps Duquesne's institutional integrity, especially with female students. And, as the article notes, there are two more claims for gender/racial discrimination still pending against the law school.

I find both of these interesting in light of the Allegheny Bar Associations explicit initiative - going back to 2008 - to specifically work against findings of massive gender inequality in Pittsburgh with their Institute of Gender Equality. Guess who was outgoing President of the Allegheny Bar in 2008, when this place was founded? Yep, Ken Gormley, who was also Vice-Chair of the Gender-Equality Task Force. This raises an eyebrow, doesn't it?

And curiously, even though Reed Smith is the second-largest place in town, they have no representation on the current Board of Governors (the 3rd-largest firm, Buchanan, Ingersoll, & Rooney, has at least two people on it).

I find these all interesting developments. Was Reed Smith key in the Allegheny Bar's findings that there were severe problems with gender inequality? Was the Institute of Gender Equality a mere meaningless action to look like it was solving the problem? Isn't Ken Gormley something of a gargantuan hypocrite for being on a Gender-Equality Task Force while his own female employee filed a seemingly-meritorious claim against him?

I don't know how to bridge this all together, but I find the seemingly-independent developments quite interesting and revealing of the tangled mess between firms, law schools, and bar associations that sometimes can prevent systemic change. Let's wait and see what happens with Ms. Dillon's lawsuit, especially if she has ammo and she starts using it over offers to settle.