Making the Grade
When a classmate sent me this article with the comment, "Stanford students are grading their employers," I shot off a hasty reply: "Someone should tell Stanford that is so last semester. Boalt students have been databasing employer information with the CDO office for some time, and by all indications Berkeley Law students will continue the tradition."
A couple hours later I had time to read the article and I found that the Stanford students are most decidedly not up to the same thing as Boalties.
Although I am sympathetic with many of their concerned observations (yes, even in 2007 it might not be an accident if you can't find a single black partner at a large law firm, and an absence of female partners at the same firm may indeed be telling, too), the project also makes me feel weird and uncomfortable.
First, there is the implied conception of "diversity" as something to be measured, ranked, and advertised.
Second, why have these mysterious anonymous students who would otherwise be at BigLaw chosen this moment to make their stand for social justice?
Third, there is the precociousness of statements like this: "'Firms that want the best students will be forced to respond to the market pressures that we’re creating,' said . . . a law student . . ."
Realistically, however, I have had a tad too much coffee and I am edgy and cranky with Online Citation Exercises and just itching for something defenseless to nitpick.
Weirdly pensive as I feel about the project, I give it a vote of support. Come to think of it, it might have happened here at Berkeley, if we had thought of it first.
A couple hours later I had time to read the article and I found that the Stanford students are most decidedly not up to the same thing as Boalties.
Although I am sympathetic with many of their concerned observations (yes, even in 2007 it might not be an accident if you can't find a single black partner at a large law firm, and an absence of female partners at the same firm may indeed be telling, too), the project also makes me feel weird and uncomfortable.
First, there is the implied conception of "diversity" as something to be measured, ranked, and advertised.
Second, why have these mysterious anonymous students who would otherwise be at BigLaw chosen this moment to make their stand for social justice?
Third, there is the precociousness of statements like this: "'Firms that want the best students will be forced to respond to the market pressures that we’re creating,' said . . . a law student . . ."
Realistically, however, I have had a tad too much coffee and I am edgy and cranky with Online Citation Exercises and just itching for something defenseless to nitpick.
Weirdly pensive as I feel about the project, I give it a vote of support. Come to think of it, it might have happened here at Berkeley, if we had thought of it first.
posted by Patrick Bageant at 10:18 PM
4 Comments:
Call me selfish, but it would make me really angry if employers who *I* want a job with were barred from OCIP because they happen to no keep track of of how many associates are gay.
But good for Stanford. Sounds like more jobs for Boalties.
I'm just not sure I see the value added of the project. They get all their numbers from Nalp, which I can just as easily look up and compare. Plus their numbers have the same problem as Nalp's - they self report, they don't all report, and they use their own metric, so it's hard to compare numbers.
I like how "diversity" means categorizing people solely on the basis of their ethnicity or sexual orientation, and then publishing the results quantitatively.
9:21, I think the value added is that it's easier to look at a one-line scorecard than dig through NALP rankings. That said, I agree that NALP data sucks.
Patrick, if firms are going to tout their diversity (which they do, incessantly, to clients and recruits alike), why isn't it fair to see whether they're backing it up in practice? Second, while I don't agree with some of what they're doing (believing as I do that most biglaw recruits know what they're getting into and knowingly trade quality of life for the money), BBLP isn't anonymous (see http://www.betterlegalprofession.org/leadership.php), and they've been at this for a while, not just "this moment." And it seem likely that at least some will be going into biglaw - if not due to the odds generally, then self interest: why try to shape firms' incentives if you don't care about the big firm life?
BBLP may be overestimating the power of student preferences (see, e.g., discussions of who's matching salaries and bonuses on above the law, or for that matter, in the Hotel Durant lobby in September) and underestimating both the power of $$ vs. non-$$ factors over students and the feeder effect of law school admissions on firm "diversity," but I don't think it's accurate to criticise them for supposed failures of anonymity, timing, or measurement.
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