[From CalLaw.com]A handful of Stanford law students have organized a group calling itself Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession.
Six months ago, they called on big law firms to drop the soul-extinguishing billable-hour requirements in favor of more balanced working conditions.Now, 150 strong, and with members from other prestige schools such as Harvard and Yale in their ranks, group took aim at big firms again — this time grading them on diversity, pro bono and billable hours. the Recorder legal newspaper is reported today.
The purpose, members say, is to give law students an easy way to compare top firms based on more than just salary information."It's time that we turn the tables a little bit," said Andrew Bruck, a Stanford law student who co-leads the group with fellow student Andrew Canter. "If I had an 'F' on my transcript why should they interview me? So if a firm gets an 'F,' why should I interview with them?"
Although lawyers at big firms commended the idea Wednesday, few were thunderstruck by the report cards, the Recorder said.
"I applaud them for looking at multiple factors,” Keith Wetmore, chairman of Morrison & Foerster, which got good grades from the group, told the Recorder. "I think most law students do that already."
Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher received low to middling marks in many categories in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles, from an "F" for having no Asian partners in its Bay Area locations to a "D" for having just 40 percent female associates in Los Angeles. The firm did not respond to a late afternoon phone call from the Recorder for comment.
In contrast, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's Palo Alto office got high marks in nearly every category, getting an "A" for having 5.8 percent Hispanic partners as well as 29 percent Asian associates.
Khurshid Khoja, an associate at Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner who serves on the firm's diversity committee, told the Recorder that the rankings are a good start, but only that. "Numbers are definitely a good indicator about where a firm might be heading, but they're not the end-all, be-all," he said. Diversity Viewpoints .
Thelen ranked near the middle in most of the categories. Khoja told the Recorder he looked at Thelen in spite of low numbers of minority partners because the firm got good reviews from his fellow Boalt Hall law students on the Asian Law Journal.
Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession started looking at diversity while researching billable-hour requirements at leading law firms in connection with their advocacy for more work-life balance, the newspaper said. "What we find in our reports is that women and minorities are leaving firms much more than men are," Bruck told the Recorder. "For women in particular, part of this has to do with the onerous billable-hour expectations that big firms put on their lawyers.
"To that end, the group also ranked firms by their percentage of female associates in comparison to female partners — the higher and closer the percentages, the higher the ranking. However, since they only got as far as putting together that list for New York offices, Bay Area firms such as MoFo, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe ranked highly.
Bruck spent the summer putting the numbers together from the NALP directory with other members of the extracurricular group. Dauber said the students received independent study credit for the project, he told the Recorder.
Some of the numbers weren't quite right, Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin's Dipanwita Deb Amar, who heads the firm's diversity committee, told the Recorder. For instance, the firm has 32 percent women partners as opposed to the 16 percent listed. Amar said the firm was looking into the discrepancy, according to the article.
In response, Bruck noted that if a firm claims different numbers, "then they have either changed from Feb. 1, or they initially provided incorrect data to NALP." His group is willing to update its data upon request.
Numbers aside, Amar said, the rankings do send a message."This study as well as other studies allows firms to keep their fingers on the pulse of what's going on in the markets and makes clear to firms that diversity is something that students take seriously," Amar told the Recorder. "Over time, law firms do listen to students who do effectively vote with their feet."
UPDATE: David Lat , our good friend and editor the acclaimed law blog Above The Law has filed extensive coverage of the Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession press conference at the National Press Club, which can be read here.
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