Thread by @RonColeman

I just watched an hour of state-bar mandated Diversity 'n' Things CLE from a very good provider. The panel was intelligent, articulate and sophisticated. And in their work, they are just delivering what the market demands: diversity.

And things.

This made me think, though. >

A large part of the discussion was how law firm clients - big clients, publicly-owned clients, #woke and never, ever broke clients - are using their clout to make law firms more diverse 'n' things.

Of course, Big Corporations and Big Law need each other - and mirror each other.>

So it's not such a big deal.

Big law firms have, after all, long advanced the careers and wealth of lawyers from every race, creed and sexualness based on criteria having at least as much to do with social skills, clubability and pedigree as professional competence. >

And for most of these firms, especially in the AmLaw 100, there is more than enough money and clout to cushion the cost of one more component of non-merit-based team building.

But these client-based demands for law firm diversity 'n' stuff seem likely to have other effects. >

One of them will be to distort recruiting, making it almost impossible for medium-sized and smaller firms to do any diversity hiring. Minority law school graduates with any kind of choice will be recruited by larger firms and, rationally, will join them. >

This, in turn, will make it impossible to for smaller firms to ever get business from big companies, if that is even really possible at all any more.

But it will also contribute greatly to the increasing bifurcation of the legal profession, particularly in commercial law. >

This may not seem like such a big deal. After all, as I hinted in the last tweet, non-big firms hardly get big clients at all any more. But making this more so than ever is bound to have profound sociological and economic ripple effects. >

One of the most profound ones, and one of the most relevant to this inquiry, is that fewer and fewer good minority lawyers will be available to serve severely under-served minority clients and communities. >

Another one is that few lawyers outside of BigLaw - which in fact is the vast majority of lawyers - will have the chance to get to know, much less work with, good minority lawyers. That cuts against the changes of attitudes that diversity 'n' things is supposed to deliver. >

As far as commercial litigation, now that I think about, fewer judges will see minority lawyers in court, moreover - partially because BigLaw hardly provides the chance for responsibility for junior lawyers in trial settings.

Similar concern, then. >

More importantly, these corporate minority lawyers - a large percentage of whom seem to end up in-house, for some reason, in senior positions; I could be wrong but that is my perception - are not going to be mentoring younger minority lawyers in a meaningful way. Not up there. >

These diversity-driven hires are also not likely, given the patterns that I see and even the approaches toward pushing diversity & stuff in BigLaw, to be significant players in BigLaw firm management. (Reasons for this would make this thread too long.) >

The result, however, seems to be that the need for pushing, even forcing, diversity & things will be ... a thing ... foever. It will probably never go away, even spotting everyone involved the very best of intentions.

That's some of what occurred to me. <>