Wednesday, January 18, 2006
A Modest Proposal
I got another letter the other day from a client, telling me (again) that the client expects my firm to achieve some level of diversity amongst our lawyers, and advising (warning?) that if we don't, they'll pull their business and take it elsewhere. These kinds of letters are increasingly common, but this most recent one got me thinking.
I'm considering writing the client back and inviting the writer to my office to sit in with each one of our lawyers as they interview the next minority candidate. If the goal is to encourage my firm to achieve greater diversity, then I say let the client participate in the hiring decisions. I'm not suggesting that we wouldn't hire a qualified minority unless we got letters like these; we clearly would (and have in the past). I'm guessing, though, that the next salvo of letters we get from the clients will be to tell us that we aren't hiring the right "kind" of minority. Better to nip that in the bud now, by getting the client involved in the hiring process up front.
On a related note, I'm going to send a letter out to my two biggest clients who have sent me these "diversify or else" letters, telling them that I've switched to an alternative hourly rate schedule. Under my new program, a client would be charge a hourly rate that is dependent upon the quality of the legal work they desire -- they just need to tell me at the beginning of each new matter how hard they want me to work, and I will bill them accordingly.
Before anyone gets tied up in knots over my suggestions, re-read the title of the post and understand where I'm coming from.
I'm considering writing the client back and inviting the writer to my office to sit in with each one of our lawyers as they interview the next minority candidate. If the goal is to encourage my firm to achieve greater diversity, then I say let the client participate in the hiring decisions. I'm not suggesting that we wouldn't hire a qualified minority unless we got letters like these; we clearly would (and have in the past). I'm guessing, though, that the next salvo of letters we get from the clients will be to tell us that we aren't hiring the right "kind" of minority. Better to nip that in the bud now, by getting the client involved in the hiring process up front.
On a related note, I'm going to send a letter out to my two biggest clients who have sent me these "diversify or else" letters, telling them that I've switched to an alternative hourly rate schedule. Under my new program, a client would be charge a hourly rate that is dependent upon the quality of the legal work they desire -- they just need to tell me at the beginning of each new matter how hard they want me to work, and I will bill them accordingly.
Before anyone gets tied up in knots over my suggestions, re-read the title of the post and understand where I'm coming from.
// so said ted @ 4:26 AM 
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I am surprised that people work at firms where diversity is so invisible that even the *clients* notice and are uncomfortable about associating with such a firm.
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: 10:30 PM
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