Baby Boomers

Age Discrimination v. Generational Divide

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How you come down on a case of alleged “age discrimination” probably depends on whether you view the issue as age discrimination in the first place, or if you see it more like trying to pry control of the country from the cold dead hands of the Baby Boomers.

This issue came to a head on Capitol Hill yesterday when Luke Russert “irritated” Nancy Pelosi by asking if her decision to stay on as Minority Leader “prohibits the party from having a younger leadership.” Pelosi snapped at him as if the question was inappropriate and ageist. And it probably was. But at the same time, the three top ranking House Democrats are 72, 73, and 72… which is freaking ancient. And their presence is clearly choking off opportunities for younger people with newer ideas.

The issue is also coming up in Pennsylvania where six old-ass judges are suing to overturn a state law that requires them to retire by the age of 70….

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.15.12

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Andrew Shirvell

* Andrew Shirvell questioned himself for over an hour today in defense of himself from Chris Armstrong’s defamation lawsuit. I’m telling you, life is so much easier when you don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation. [Detroit Free Press]

* It looks like Boies Schiller somehow filled the spot left by Elizabeth Wurtzel. [Thomson Reuters News and Insight]

* Election Law professor Rick Hasen is disappointed with the Pennsylvania voter ID decision today. [Election Law Blog]

* Grumpy baby boomer blogs angrily about law and life, a.k.a. my future. [Grumpy Baby Boomer]

* How to dress like a female lawyer from a television show. Funny, I didn’t know “breast implants” were a fashion accessory now. [Levo League]

* The Daily Caller dug up an article Michelle Obama wrote about critical race theory while at Harvard. She makes some pretty good points, especially considering the perspective of a young black person trying to deal with Harvard Law School in 1988. But I suspect the context of the article, the theory, the history, the university, and everything else will be missed by most of the readers of the Daily Caller. [Daily Caller]

* Here’s a new social network for law students. [Indiana Lawyer]

* Buy Tyler Coulson’s book (affiliate link), save a dog. You don’t want to kill puppies, do you? [PR Web]

* Lat is on a proposed SXSW panel about haw law firms should (and should not) be using Twitter and other social media. I hope firms don’t listen to him, because it’ll make my job easier. [SXSW PanelPicker]

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Non-Sequiturs: 07.31.12

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* Chief Justice John Roberts, in his capacity as circuit justice for the Fourth Circuit, has given the green light — for the time being — to Maryland’s continued collection of DNA samples from people charged with violent felonies. [New York Times]

* Professor Dan Markel isn’t a fan of the practice, arguing that it “is yet another abuse of the presumption of innocence.” [PrawfsBlawg]

* In other Supreme Court news, the proponents of Prop 8′s ban on gay marriage have filed a petition for certiorari with the Court. [Arthur Leonard / Leonard Link]

* And in other gay marriage news, yet another federal judge — Judge Vanessa Bryant (D. Conn.), a Bush II appointee — has struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. [Chris Geidner / BuzzFeed]

A California litigatrix's lawyerly lair.

* Lawyerly Lairs: Emily Alexander’s beautiful, light-filled home is awash in color. There are no hunting prints in sight — even though she used to practice at Sullivan & Cromwell. [California Home + Design]

* The mother of a man who died during a police chase has sued the SFPD over her son’s accidentally shooting himself. Opines SFist: “It remains unclear to us why [Kenneth] Harding has been chosen to serve as a martyr, given his not-so-stellar record and the self-inflicted wound.” [SFist]

* Poor Professor Campos — does his self-loathing know no bounds? The prominent law professor, one of legal academia’s harshest (and most eloquent) critics, has now turned his powerful fire on baby boomers — of whom he is one. [Salon]

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Mentoring: Just Another Thing the Baby Boomers Don’t Do Well

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As the Baby Boomers continue to age, we’ve been documenting their reluctance to gracefully leave the Biglaw stage. One would think that all these lingering old people would at least be a good mentoring resource for the younger generation. Kash suggested as much when we debated the topic earlier this year.

But an article up on American Lawyer this morning suggests that aging Americans don’t view “mentoring” the young as part of their job description. A former Kirkland & Ellis partner, Steven Harper, writes about the mentoring gap in Biglaw. His starting point is an interesting article from former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan:

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Peggy Noonan, writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, hit on an important truth that law firm leaders should heed. In lamenting what she called the national need for “adult supervision,” Noonan wrote, “there’s kind of an emerging mentoring gap going on in America right now … a generalized absence of the wise old politician/lawyer/leader/editor who helps the young along, who teaches them the ropes and ways and traditions of a craft.”

Dear Baby Boomers, please look to your own house before you criticize Gen Y for its Twitter-aided navel gazing…

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