Poor, Black Lawyers Lack Work Ethic, Says Legal Recruiter

In a long, rambling screed, a top legal recruiter shares his views on why minorities fail in law and it's... something.

Harrison Barnes LFOne would assume that a legal recruiter would bend over backward to ingratiate himself to potential clients. Or at least not go out of his way to insult broad swaths of folks as unplaceable, bad lawyers before he even tries to get them a new job. You might think these things, but Harrison Barnes doesn’t.

The BCG Attorney Search and LawCrossing honcho renews his mastery of the TL;DR with a 9100+ word screed about how poor people, rich people, and black people just don’t have the work ethic instilled in them to succeed. The post raises some salient points if you believe people are cardboard cutouts based on a Catskills routine from the 1950s. Beyond that, it’s just an enjoyable window into what will be a roller coaster of a decline into senility in a few years.

This, of course, isn’t the first stereotype rodeo for Barnes, who told his client base of potential laterals that seeking a latter-career work-life balance makes them bad lawyers and coached candidates to craft their résumés to avoid giving the impression that they might not be straight white guys. But it’s always good to have him out there pumping out the bold, fresh takes on America’s pressing issues:

I am also about to say some shocking things; however, my intent here is to show you rules that can help any attorney succeed—upper class, lower class, middle class, black, white and so forth. Without understanding the rules of the game many people fail. My showing you the rules is meant to help, because I care very deeply about what I do and I care about attorneys who really want to get hired and get ahead.

Oh good, because I think we’ve all been waiting for a financially secure white guy with the courage to come out and explain why poor black people fail. God bless you, sir!

Actually, before we get too far down this rabbit hole, let’s take a moment to bracket the high point of this article and note that the crux of Barnesology actually rests on a reasonable generalization:

The problem is that people from the upper class and the lower class often do not understand the value of hard work. Without the ability to discern the value of hard work, people from the upper and lower classes are unable to fit into middle class institutions like law firms. Of course this is not always the case. Like all generalizations there are lots of exceptions to this rule. On a global level, though, what makes people succeed in law firms is diligence and understanding the value of hard work.

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Sure. Children from wealthy upbringings may be spoiled because it’s much easier to spoil a child when you’re swimming in cash. Even if wealthy parents don’t turn loose the next Affluenza vector, they could spawn the sort of kid who falls backward into a modicum of success because the impact of failure was never disqualifying. There’s no reason wealthy kids have to end up this way, mind you, but they are more likely to than they would without wealth to draw upon. So we’ll give Barnes a point. Likewise, lower class kids may not see opportunities for upward mobility around them and any setback they suffer could well doom their hopes for advancement and add to a cycle of discouragement. Another fair point. But it is here where Barnesology departs from reasonable social observation and launches headlong off the cliff of “calling black people lazy.”

What happens to [minority] attorneys is that they start doing work and make so many errors that the partners in the law firms stop giving them assignments. They stop giving them work because the associates’ skills are not up to par and they do not want to train them. When they don’t receive training and integration, the attorneys do not advance and get discouraged.

Ahem. Bulls**t.

Indeed, empirically disproven bulls**t. Science took aim at the claim that minority attorneys “make so many errors” and are “not up to par” and found that the errors are cropping up on the other side of the markup pen — law firm partners label the exact same memo sloppier if they’re told a black lawyer wrote it as opposed to a white lawyer.

On a five point scale, reviews for the exact same memo averaged a 3.2 for the “African American” author and 4.1 for the “Caucasian” author. More surprising were the findings of “objective” criteria such as spelling. The partner evaluators found an average of 2.9 spelling and grammar errors for the “Caucasian” authors and 5.8 such errors for the “African American” authors. Overall the memo presumed to have been written by a “Caucasian” was “evaluated to be better in regards to the analysis of facts and had substantively fewer critical comments.”

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So the empirical evidence seems damning to the Barnes cause, but listen y’all:

As an aside, I co-taught a class in race relations when I was at the University of Chicago, wrote an (unpublished) book that chronicled the issues African Americans have had integrating into primarily white educational institutions, and have a lot of interest in this so my observations are not racist.

Well then.

Look, you really should read some of this claptrap yourself. Like when he waltzes through an analysis of the Pittsburgh Steelers playbook and envisions himself playing wide receiver, which would seem like a ridiculous idea if his posts weren’t already a concussion-fueled rant (and let’s face it, how bad could Barnes be? Antonio Brown is already double-covered and still making the catch anyway). Or when he starts dissing Rashida Jones for no discernible reason. Heat up some tea and just lose yourself in the capriciousness of his stream of consciousness. Harrison Barnes is the James Joyce of condescending drivel.

All this randomness is ostensibly in service of Barnes’s obsession with the idea that being a lawyer is “middle class.” Jesus, this Hillary Clinton definition of middle class as making $250K/year is really taking hold, isn’t it? Speaking of Clintons, Barnes saves one of his most insane observations about work ethic and class for Bubba himself:

Paradoxically — and this bears notice — two of the most successful attorneys of our generation were both out of lower and/or working class backgrounds: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Clinton was an outstanding student and advanced despite his social class. Barack Obama was also from a lower and/or working class background. We do not know what sort of student Barack was because no one has ever seen his grades and he refuses to release them, but he was likely an excellent student as well. What we do know about these two, though, is they never practiced law. Clinton became a professor and Obama a guest lecturer. This allowed them to think, write, organize communities and be politicians.

Who knows what would have happened to them had they practiced law. My guess is they would have failed.

That’s your guess, eh? That Clinton and Obama couldn’t have practiced law because they simply can’t understand the value of hard work? Yeah, that “mastery of the free world” gig is a real slacker job.

Actually, this is all starting to make sense! Maybe Barnes IS trying to ingratiate himself to potential clients and just lacks the basic social understanding to do it right. I mean, when you read this Clinton/Obama stuff, it’s almost as though he actually thinks there are people who get off on the idea that working in Biglaw is a harder job than being president. That there are potential laterals out there thinking “whatever Obama, can you turn this motion to reconsider draft in 4 hours? Didn’t think so, punk.” These are Barnes’s people!

And good luck to him, but I’ve got a feeling the demographic who think closing a merger is tougher than negotiating with Mitch McConnell is exactly zero.

Why Upper and Lower Class Attorneys Rarely Succeed in Law Firms: How Race and Class Often Hinder Law Firm Success [BCG Attorney Search]

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