Law School Posts Job Listing Seeking 'Wives' Of Students

Yes, this is from 2017.

Just waiting for my man to get back from law school!

The HGTV hit show Fixer Upper is doing a lot of work to transform the image of Waco, Texas, from a small college town whose most famous event is the siege on the Branch Davidians compound into somewhere hip and cool that’s worth a weekend trip away. But Chip and JoJo cannot move mountains alone. They need the help of every business in town to avoid the unforced errors that reinforce the image of Waco as a backwards, hick town.

That includes law firms.

Note to the Waco firm of Fulbright and Winniford — not every student enrolled at Baylor Law School is a man (or lesbian) who has already taken themselves a wife. You may think that is an obvious fact, seeing as women now make up the majority of people enrolled in law schools (and at Baylor it is an even 50-50 split), and married men are only a sliver of those male law students. But in a recent posting for a receptionist/clerical worker, the firm specifically opened the job up to “Baylor Law School wives”:

Position Available at Fulbright Winniford

Fulbright Winniford is looking for a part-time receptionist/clerical worker. Our firm would like to reach out to the Baylor Law School wives to fill this position. If you are interested, please contact Ashley Dekle via email [redacted].

The notion that some dear little “Baylor Law School wife” is just hoping for a little part-time job to occupy her time while her man is busy in classes is so hopelessly old-fashioned it’ll take a boat load of modern farmhouse Pinterest time to erase it.

What’s even worse is that the law school itself sent the listing to every student. Packaged as part of a school-wide “Student Announcements” email, it was sandwiched between the Native American Law Students Association Interest Meeting and the Title IX Online Course Reminder (oh yeah, that’s the other thing I think when I hear Waco).

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We reached out to the law school, and they provided us with this statement:

We provide information about employment opportunities to our students as a service to local employers. We regret that the posting in question was published as received without editing. The wording was inappropriate. We will put into place a review protocol for all future job postings.

It’s certainly understandable that in the rush of back-to-school announcements a school admin missed the offensive language sent to them by the firm, but given how short the job posting was, they really should have caught it.

Maybe next time try to ensure the job listing is from 2017, not 1957.


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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).