Biglaw

Are Good Law Firms 'Woke'?

A few weeks ago, I took a test to measure my leadership style and assess whether I had unconscious biases.

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Shoot!

I wrote a book that was fast asleep.

The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law argues that you should do your very best on every project (and that may not be good enough), you should be responsible, you should be diligent, you should be responsive. (I frequently defend those ideas in this column, too.) If you don’t care to do those things, then don’t expect to succeed at a good law firm. (You might succeed at a bad law firm. You might succeed in a career other than law. But you won’t succeed at a good law firm. Been there; done that. It’s not how it works.)

A few weeks ago, I took a test to measure my leadership style and assess whether I had unconscious biases.

I was startled to see questions asking whether I believed in “pursuing perfection” in my work, whether I valued “standard writing” in communications, and whether I thought “timeliness” mattered.

It turns out that if you believe in those things, you’re a less “inclusive” leader.

Indeed, I learned, articles now insist that aiming for perfection — or as close to it as mortals can come — is no longer politically correct.

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If this is political incorrectness, then Biglaw is surely guilty.

I worked for a couple of decades at one of the world’s leading law firms.  Believe you me, that law firm pursued perfection. It insisted on using standard English writing in communications. And timeliness mattered.

It’s all a matter of self-protection. Partners are both expensive and busy. If partners receive top-quality work from associates, this saves partners time and clients money. Partners thus prefer to work with good associates.

Think of things from the partner’s perspective:

If you give me a draft brief that isn’t any good, then I have to rewrite the thing.

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I’m not going to ask you to help with the next project. I’d rather make my life easier.

If I ask you to think through a legal project, and you miss the key issues, then either I must identify the issues myself or the client loses.

I’m not going to ask you to help with the next project. My clients prefer to win.

If you say that you’re going to get me a draft on Wednesday, and you don’t deliver it until Friday, then I’ll be crunched for time.

You lose. I’m not going to work with you again.

You might be allowed to produce poor-quality work once or twice. Partners understand that junior people are junior, and it takes time to learn. But partners will not be forgiving for very long.

Law firms are vicious, but they’re vicious in precisely the way a free market for associates dictates that they’ll be vicious.

When associates are up for partnership, the existing partners ask: “Is the associate a great lawyer?” and “Does the associate have the potential to bring in new business?”

If the answers are yes, the associate is invited into the partnership. If the answers are no, the associate is told to move on.

If this is not being woke, then every good law firm in America is asleep.

I suspect that every good management consulting firm, and investment bank, and accounting firm is asleep in this way, too.

If you want to do mediocre work, then go right ahead — but not in today’s great institutions.

If this is improper, then it is going to take many, many generations to break great law firms of that culture.

I don’t deny that large law firms have been backward in the more traditional, — and nastier — senses. Until the 1960s, the white-shoe law firms didn’t hire women or Jews or African-Americans or other “undesirables.” Everyone now agrees that this was wrong. Even today, partners prefer to hire, and mentor, and have lunch with people who resemble themselves, and that perpetuates sexism and racism. We must overcome that.

But the standards of quality for succeeding in a professional services firm apply equally to everyone — to associates who are male or female; white, black, brown, red, or yellow. Indeed, not so long ago, this was considered to be the preferred standard — the standard that eliminated racism and sexism.  Professors should read law school exams that are identified only by number; this avoids bias grounded in the sex or race of the student. Audition for an orchestra from behind a screen; this avoids bias grounded in the sex or race of the musician.

Historically, institutions tried to eliminate bias by concealing the identity of the applicant. Are we really saying that now we cannot judge the quality of the work without knowing the identity of the person who produced it?

Standards of excellence have applied equally through time.

Beethoven and Rembrandt didn’t aim for “good enough.” They aimed for perfection.

Booker T. Washington and Toni Morrison didn’t aim for “good enough.” They aimed for perfection.

Hokusai and Kenzaburō Ōe didn’t aim for “good enough.” They aimed for perfection.

If this is improper, then it’s absolutely entrenched; it permeates good law firms to the core.

It will take an awful long time to overcome it.

And you’ll have to convince many people that society will be improved for having defeated it.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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