Law in Contemporary Society

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JesseRamosFirstEssay 8 - 15 Jun 2023 - Main.JesseRamos
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A Case Against 1L Diversity Fellowships

-- By JesseRamos - 22 May 2023

Introduction

1L diversity fellowships have captured the attention of diverse law students across many top law schools, but will they ultimately fail to deliver on most of their promises? By relying on its reputation for championing diversity in the workplace and offering seemingly generous salaries coupled with opportunities to interact with multi-billion-dollar clients, the 1L diversity fellowship at its surface seems to be the best way to spend your summer. However, when scrutinizing firms’ business models and their ultimate outcomes for associates, the deal ends up being worth much less than it is made out to be. Moreover, these talented law students at said top law schools have the potential to spend their summer meeting their own clients and discovering areas of interest that can better fulfill their monetary and moral needs.

Sweetening the Deal

A 1L diversity fellow will make a pre-tax summer salary of around $40,000 and, in many cases, will receive scholarships for law school expenses. In addition, big law firms promise to foster professional growth and development: summer associates are allowed to sit in on client calls, engage in the same training opportunities as full-time associates, and more. Throughout the summer programming, summer associates are taken out to expensive meals and participate in various charity events to help humanize the firm and its current employees or partners. Unless a 1L associate engages in egregious behavior or activities, they can expect to receive a return offer for their 2L summer, followed by a full-time offer pending passage of the bar exam. Should the 1L associate agree to a full-time offer, the diversity fellowship will have achieved its purpose: to acquire young talent in furtherance of its own goals.

The Illusion of Mutual Need and Longevity

While the deal may seem sweet, the programming and benefits that accompany these fellowships are something of a dramaturgy. As Leff conveys in Swindling and Selling, the con artist (the firm) purports to be the only means of accessing something of interest (the client, the pay, the training), and the mark (the 1L associate) is deceivingly said to have something of equal importance that can be exchanged (the services). In this case, the 1L diversity fellowship exists to make the overqualified summer associate feel as if the only way to access these massive clients is to work directly for the firm. A diversity fellow accepts an assignment and drafts a document that will likely never be seen by a client or sits in on a call only to never have their voice ever be heard. These opportunities to “interact” with the client intend to make the fellow feel as if they are building their own book of business, which is a total mirage.

In practice, large law firms expect that their full-time diverse associates mindlessly draft documents that anyone with adequate training could draft themselves until the firm finds that they are being paid more than what it’s worth to train new associates. When the cost of retaining exceeds the benefit, the diverse associate’s options are limited. They may accept an in-house position or lateral to positions at other firms, but both opportunities are also unlikely to generate clients for the diverse associate.

The Data

Data supports the conclusion that firms have no interest in retaining diverse associates until they achieve partnership and can interact with clients in a meaningful way. At one large law firm, about 200 of its U.S.-based associates and less than 70 of its equity partners are diverse (from underrepresented backgrounds), compared to their 1,600 and 1,100 respective denominators (https://media2.vault.com/14347671/kirkland-and-ellis-dei-ready-for-web.pdf). While this may only be one firm, countless data for similar-ranking firms will present similar findings. Shallow diversity missions and scholarships are a means of entrapping overqualified diverse associates until their true purpose of being exploited for profit reaches its end. Equally beneficial to the firm is that departing associates will not be able to take its clients with them, and so they have minimized the likelihood of creating new competition.

Potential Alternatives to 1L Diversity Fellowships

What, if anything, can a 1L do to make better use of their summer? There is no perfect answer, but here are some options: work directly for a client to assert your value to them, meet people who work in the industry you hope to provide services to, and conduct research to discover what services people are willing to pay for. None of these options are mutually exclusive, and all can be done in a summer to achieve a level of self-discovery and professional development that a big law firm’s summer programming has no intent to provide. In other words, the overqualified 1L diversity fellow should instead strive to discover what services they would like to provide, to whom they can provide them to, and how much they might be able to charge. They may be pleasantly surprised by how much they could achieve without the support of a big law firm.

Conclusion

The 1L diversity fellowship is worth much less than the value 1L students attribute to it. In the short-term, they offer financial security and the chance to pay back a significant amount of student loans. In the long-term, however, the deal is not so appealing. The 1L diversity fellow will more likely than not be forced out of the firm without a book of business, and they will be forced to either work in-house positions or lateral into other firms where the same is to be expected of them without any clients in exchange. Instead, a 1L summer can be better spent looking for one’s own place in the legal field and finding clients that are willing to pay satisfactory amounts for their services. The sooner incoming 1L students can recognize this, the sooner they will be able to market themselves as promising attorneys and set themselves up for a future practice where they retain their own autonomy and build a book of business.


JesseRamosFirstEssay 7 - 01 Jun 2023 - Main.JesseRamos
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A Case Against 1L Diversity Fellowships

-- By JesseRamos - 22 May 2023

Introduction

1L diversity fellowships have captured the attention of diverse law students across many top law schools, but will they ultimately fail to deliver on most of their promises? By relying on its reputation for championing diversity in the workplace and offering seemingly generous salaries coupled with opportunities to interact with multi-billion-dollar clients, the 1L diversity fellowship at its surface seems to be the best way to spend your summer. However, when scrutinizing firms’ business models and their ultimate outcomes for associates, the deal ends up being worth much less than it is made out to be. Moreover, these talented law students at said top law schools have the potential to spend their summer meeting their own clients and discovering areas of interest that can better fulfill their monetary and moral needs.

Sweetening the Deal

A 1L diversity fellow will make a pre-tax summer salary of around $40,000 and, in many cases, will receive scholarships for law school expenses. In addition, big law firms promise to foster professional growth and development: summer associates are allowed to sit in on client calls, engage in the same training opportunities as full-time associates, and more. Throughout the summer programming, summer associates are taken out to expensive meals and participate in various charity events to help humanize the firm and its current employees or partners. Unless a 1L associate engages in egregious behavior or activities, they can expect to receive a return offer for their 2L summer, followed by a full-time offer pending passage of the bar exam. Should the 1L associate agree to a full-time offer, the diversity fellowship will have achieved its purpose: to acquire young talent in furtherance of its own goals.

The Illusion of Mutual Need and Longevity

While the deal may seem sweet, the programming and benefits that accompany these fellowships are something of a dramaturgy. As Leff conveys in Swindling and Selling, the con artist (the firm) purports to be the only means of accessing something of interest (the client, the pay, the training), and the mark (the 1L associate) is deceivingly said to have something of equal importance that can be exchanged (the services). In this case, the 1L diversity fellowship exists to make the overqualified summer associate feel as if the only way to access these massive clients is to work directly for the firm. A diversity fellow accepts an assignment and drafts a document that will likely never be seen by a client or sits in on a call only to never have their voice ever be heard. These opportunities to “interact” with the client intend to make the fellow feel as if they are building their own book of business, which is a total mirage.

In practice, large law firms expect that their full-time diverse associates mindlessly draft documents that anyone with adequate training could draft themselves until the firm finds that they are being paid more than what it’s worth to train new associates. When the cost of retaining exceeds the benefit, the diverse associate’s options are limited. They may accept an in-house position or lateral to positions at other firms, but both opportunities are also unlikely to generate clients for the diverse associate.

The Data

Data supports the conclusion that firms have no interest in retaining diverse associates until they achieve partnership and can interact with clients in a meaningful way. At one large law firm, about 200 of its U.S.-based associates and less than 70 of its equity partners are diverse (from underrepresented backgrounds), compared to their 1,600 and 1,100 respective denominators (https://media2.vault.com/14347671/kirkland-and-ellis-dei-ready-for-web.pdf). While this may only be one firm, countless data for similar-ranking firms will present similar findings. Shallow diversity missions and scholarships are a means of entrapping overqualified diverse associates until their true purpose of being exploited for profit reaches its end. Equally beneficial to the firm is that departing associates will not be able to take its clients with them, and so they have minimized the likelihood of creating new competition.

Potential Alternatives to 1L Diversity Fellowships

What, if anything, can a 1L do to make better use of their summer? There is no perfect answer, but here are some options: work directly for a client to assert your value to them, meet people who work in the industry you hope to provide services to, and conduct research to discover what services people are willing to pay for. None of these options are mutually exclusive, and all can be done in a summer to achieve a level of self-discovery and professional development that a big law firm’s summer programming has no intent to provide. In other words, the overqualified 1L diversity fellow should instead strive to discover what services they would like to provide, to whom they can provide them to, and how much they might be able to charge. They may be pleasantly surprised by how much they could achieve without the support of a big law firm.

Conclusion

The 1L diversity fellowship is worth much less than the value 1L students attribute to it. In the short-term, they offer financial security and the chance to pay back a significant amount of student loans. In the long-term, however, the deal is not so appealing. The 1L diversity fellow will more likely than not be forced out of the firm without a book of business, and they will be forced to either work in-house positions or lateral into other firms where the same is to be expected of them without any clients in exchange. Instead, a 1L summer can be better spent looking for one’s own place in the legal field and finding clients that are willing to pay satisfactory amounts for their services. The sooner incoming 1L students can recognize this, the sooner they will be able to market themselves as promising attorneys and set themselves up for a future practice where they retain their own autonomy and build a book of business.


JesseRamosFirstEssay 6 - 22 May 2023 - Main.JesseRamos
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JesseRamosFirstEssay 5 - 15 May 2023 - Main.EbenMoglen
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JesseRamosFirstEssay 4 - 08 May 2023 - Main.JesseRamos
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JesseRamosFirstEssay 3 - 04 May 2023 - Main.JesseRamos
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JesseRamosFirstEssay 2 - 26 Feb 2023 - Main.EbenMoglen
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JesseRamosFirstEssay 1 - 17 Feb 2023 - Main.JesseRamos
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Revision 8r8 - 15 Jun 2023 - 16:32:35 - JesseRamos
Revision 7r7 - 01 Jun 2023 - 00:08:22 - JesseRamos
Revision 6r6 - 22 May 2023 - 23:30:13 - JesseRamos
Revision 5r5 - 15 May 2023 - 15:54:51 - EbenMoglen
Revision 4r4 - 08 May 2023 - 14:27:05 - JesseRamos
Revision 3r3 - 04 May 2023 - 01:48:00 - JesseRamos
Revision 2r2 - 26 Feb 2023 - 17:37:59 - EbenMoglen
Revision 1r1 - 17 Feb 2023 - 18:28:39 - JesseRamos
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