Plaintiffs Firms, Rankings

There's Something Weird About These 'Elite Lawyers' Rankings

We don't have the official congratulations message from the National Law Journal to the firms, but this reader created one that perfectly captures the problem...

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The National Law Journal named its Elite Trial Lawyers for 2014. It’s a list of 50 firms that the National Law Journal selected through a vetting process that reviewed “more than 100 firms, poring over nominations and reporting on performance.” Making a nearly 50 percent cut on an entirely subjective list. That must have been rough.

At a quick glance, the list seems entirely reasonable. A lot of these names look like usual heavy-hitters. And congratulations to everyone who made the list.

We don’t have the official congratulations message from the National Law Journal to the firms, but this reader created one that perfectly captures the problem…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO9gaNPOnqA&w=560&h=315]

Raining men indeed. Not much in the “non-white” category either. You could try to rationalize this as the natural consequence of older and more accomplished lawyers coming from an era when the law school population was even less diverse than it is today. But you would be wrong. Because the magazine wasn’t ranking individual lawyers, it was ranking whole firms. In their words, “We recognized the work of the firms as a whole, understanding that successful trial work is usually the result of a team effort.” Translation: anyone from the firm could be in these pictures. Any prominent partner. A group shot of a diverse trial team. Literally anyone at the firm. Despite this, the overwhelming majority of firms are represented by a generic shot of a white dude, usually a named partner. It’s like the National Law Journal said this award was about firms as a whole rather than the top of the letterhead… and then made the exact opposite choice in art direction. Even if these were just the shots the firm chose at random, the onus was on the magazine to make sure its collage was representative.

To pick on the photo selection for one firm at random, let’s take a look at Sanford Heisler, which is just a shot of David Sanford. But this isn’t fair to Sanford Heisler as a firm. Its own website goes out of its way to celebrate its legitimately diverse team — and not just in lower-ranking roles, three of the four managing partners are women! But you’d never know from these rankings.

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Lest you think this doesn’t matter, remember that we’re talking about plaintiffs’ side work. Maybe Biglaw can get away with fronting itself as an old boys’ club to the banking crowd, but plaintiffs are a more diverse group of clients. Indeed, the headline on Sanford Heisler’s website is about a gender discrimination suit. Appealing to diverse clients matters to a lot of these firms.

I’m not saying the National Law Journal consciously thought to ignore diversity in its rankings. But not consciously thinking about this stuff is the problem.

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