Anonymous Lawyer

I received an e-mail asking me to comment on age discrimination in law firm hiring:

"A few weeks ago, there was a terrible article in the National Law Journal about how 'older' or second-career lawyers most often end up as solos, prompted by some NALP statistics about the paucity of grads 36 and older in BigLaw. The article went on to say ... that nontrads don’t want to work hard and that they don’t like taking orders from people younger than them, so they don’t seek jobs in BigLaw. ... Right. I quit a job I was excellent at, went into debt, spent three years in law school, because I don’t want to work hard. Huh?"

My comment? Your e-mail proves the point. You were reading the National Law Journal. And then you took the time to e-mail me. That's time you could have been billing clients. That's time you could have been working hard and making partners money. But you weren't. You were slacking off, just like everyone your age does, with their "children" and their "elderly parents" and their "doctor appointments." Young associates don't read the National Law Journal. They use it to wipe themselves after they go to the bathroom in their office trash cans because they don't want to take time out from billing clients to go to the bathroom. Young associates don't think about whining to someone like me because they're too busy knocking on my door and asking me how they can make my life easier and my clients happier and my contractor richer.

It's not my fault, or the fault of any of my colleagues, that you decided to go to law school. It's not our fault you got into debt. It's not our fault you want a job you can't get. Baseball players can't get jobs after age 40 either. It's the same thing here. Your skills may or may not deteriorate (I can argue both sides of that), but your stamina certainly does. Your energy does. Your drive does. If you're just starting out at age 40, you know you're never going to get to the top, so why even try. You're complacent. Not because you're choosing to be, but because you're too old and experienced in life not to be. Young people don't have perspective. They don't understand that the kinds of things we demand from them are pointless and not worth getting all worked up about. They don't get that we're not going to fire them. They don't get that most of the pressure they feel to stay here all night is pressure they're putting on themselves and that the consequences for living a normal life are all in their head. But older associates know it's all a bit of a game. Older associates know I don't really have the power to behead an associate in the guillotine I stole from the Studio 60 soundstage when we took the summer associates on a tour. But the kids don't. They think it's going to really happen. They think we're really going to kill them if they don't finish the document review by 6AM tomorrow morning. And that's why we like them.

Maybe you're willing to work hard. But you're probably not willing to be humiliated, and honestly it's a lot less fun to humiliate a 40-year-old, with 2 kids and 3 ex-wives and a mortgage and a limp than it is to humiliate a 25-year-old without any responsibilities except to the firm. You want to blame someone for this? Blame your law school for accepting you. No one forced you into this game. No one pretended you would be employable. And don't think law is the only industry where this is an issue. Ask a 40-year-old TV writer. If you can find one. Or a 40-year-old exotic dancer. Don't see too many of those either, at least not at the summer associate strip club events. Maybe we just pick our venue carefully, but I've got to believe there's some pretty big age discrimination going on there too.

And it makes sense for largely the same reasons. No wants to see a 40-year-old doing document review, or taking off their clothes. It's just the way the world works.