Biglaw Retreat Uses Diverse Attorneys As Actual Tokens
Are icebreakers really that hard?
Law firm retreats are, by design, awkward things. They try to get people from lots of different offices who don’t necessarily work together to make connections. And for more junior attorneys, there is an underlying current that the whole thing is very-important-for-your-career, without any clear blueprint on what to do to make the event the most impactful.
In the midst of all this awkwardness, it is only natural that the firm event planners would take it upon themselves to institute a little forced socialization, in the form of a corporate icebreaker.
That’s exactly what happened at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. At a recent firm retreat, there was a networking event and BINGO cards were whipped out. Attendees were encouraged to complete certain tasks listed on the card (across, up and down, or diagonally) to win a prize.
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Good in theory, but things go off the rail, as a helpful source at the firm pointed out to Above the Law:
This isn’t so much creating an opportunity for meaningful connections between attorneys of diverse backgrounds as much as it is telling minority attorneys at the firm they are only useful to white people when they can be used as a tool to win a prize. As an astute tipster noted:
#tonedeaf
Diverse attorneys reduced to bingo tokens
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Listen, diverse people who are making a career in Biglaw have to put up with a lot of racially tinged bullshit. I am sure that for a lot of those people, this incident barely cracks the top 10 most awful things they’ve had to deal with in their careers, but come on: we can do better.
Kathryn 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).