I don’t think it would surprise anybody if the next managing partner of Latham & Watkins ended up being white. I don’t think it would surprise anybody if the next managing partner ended up being a white male. Sure, former managing partner Bill Voge resigned under a cloud of sexually inappropriate messaging, but this is Biglaw we’re talking about. Whenever one white man falls, two others rise to crowd out all others and take his place.
But, even though the story’s conclusion would not have surprised anybody, especially if it were announced as a fait accompli, Latham took the unusual step of unveiling eight “finalists” for the position. It’s a total white-out.
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Pathetic.
Voge left for inappropriate behavior in the middle of a moment that is raising awareness about barriers to women, and Latham is going roll out a finalists list with only two women. There are no people of color that I can see, though I suppose Latham will tell me that one of them is Irish and that the Irish are the blacks of Europe.
I really would support something like the “Rooney Rule” for managing partners. You don’t have to hire a woman or minority to be the head coach of your firm. But you have to at least interview them. You have to put them through the process. One of the things we know about the success of the Rooney Rule in actual football is that candidates who wouldn’t have otherwise been considered get to go through the process, learn something, and become stronger candidates for the next opportunity. Yes, you hope that somebody is just going to waltz in there and knock your socks off. But, more often than not, people like head coaches and managing partners are groomed.
In any event, this list of finalists, given who Latham is coming off of, is an incredibly bad look. It looks like a list of potential Trump appointees, not a list of potential leaders of a global powerhouse law firm.
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8 Latham Partners Named as Candidates to Replace Bill Voge [American Lawyer]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.