Homogeny

...replace the ruler with a symbol of the law, and the army with a law firm recruiter, and this image accurately represents the biglaw experience.

Yes, BigLaw Associates like homogeny. It’s not so much that WE like it, but the procrustean man likes it. While we’re all freaking out about losing our jobs (but for some reason we the authors still have jobs and still have time to post on this blog–life is unfair. suck it) let’s examine the BigLaw structure.

Not that I know anything about philosophy except that I throw it out there to impress the girls (but let’s be honest, as soon as I say I’m a BigLaw lawyer and I make X amount of money with SIX digits, I don’t need to say much else), but let’s take a look at Nietzsche and his Ennoblement through degeneration passage in Human All Too Human.

“History teaches that the best preserved tribe among a people is the one in which most men have a living communal sense as a consequence of sharing their customary and indisputable principles….The danger to these strong communities founded on homogeneous individuals who have character is growing stupidity, which is graduatlly increased by heredity, and which, in an case, collows all stability like a shadow. It is the individuals who have fewer ties and are mjuch more uncertain and morall weaker upon whom spriritual progress depends in such communities, they are the men who make new and manifold experiements. Innumerable men of this sort perish because of their weaknes without any very visible effect, but in general, especially if they have descendents, they loosen up and from time to time inflict a would on the stable element of the community….those who degenerate are of the highest importance whereve progress is to take place; every great progress must be preceded by a partial weakining. The strongest natures hold fast to the type; the weaker ones help to develop it further.”

Ok, I know your natural response to this is:

1. If you’re a woman, you want to jump my rich and philosophical bones and
2. what the hell are you talking about.

You see, the Man is the homogenous community. The old white fat men who hire young soon to be fat white men, or the sons of clients, or the ones who gufaw and golf even if they aren’t the smartest or the most progressive. law firms are, as we all know, risk averse, but this risk averse has made them incestual where they hire only their “own kind” and like Brittish royalty that used to marry sisters to brothers or first cousins or uncles and nieces to keep it in the family, the product has been a bunch of intellectually hunchbacked six fingered men (seriously, whenever I think of six fingers, I have to think of Christopher Guest in Princess Bride and then that makes me think of This is Spinal Tap and that makes me think of a an amp that goes to eleven and then I giggle apparently for no reason and my office mate thinks I do drugs, which I might do but drugs have nothing to do with my giggling in said siutation). So, now, back to Nietzsche.

The structure of BigLaw has been to hire the same old damn people that look like the same old damn people in charge. As as Nietzsche said, homogeny breeds stupidity (and six fingered people (insert giggle)) because in this world where the whole damn world is suffering from this economic crisis, we need to think outside the box. If law firms are going to survive, they are going to have to hire the weird black girl with a fro, or the (gasp) non-nerdy outspoken Asian girl, or the white guy who likes other guys if they have the law degree/grades to back it up. you can’t keep hiring the same second tier b.s. attorneys who tuck in their polo shirts into their khakis even on a saturday night. Got it?

Homogeny breeds stupidity. And that takes us to the state of BigLaw.

So if you find yourself one of the “weaker” ones that got the axe, well, you fought the good fight because changes were needed. And Nietzsche meant “weak” in the sense that you are outliers without a mob army to follow you, not that you are weak in the plain meaning of the word (yes, shut up, I am a corporate attorney, that had to be thrown in there).

Now, monkeys, hump other monkeys outside of your circle and diversify your genetic code and fuck the Man while you’re at it. Being different is a good thing, even if law firm don’t recognize it yet.