Posted on 12/03/2006 7:25:10 AM PST by freespirited
It started out as a who's who of Twin Cities law firms joining forces to lure minority attorneys to Minnesota.
But the Twin Cities Diversity in Practice group set off a tempest when it excluded a firm that handled a pair of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging affirmative action.
The group's leaders said letting the Minneapolis law firm of Maslon, Edelman, Borman & Brand join the effort would hamper its mission: to make the bar more racially diverse.
"Would this law firm participating in our effort help or hinder us to do what we are trying to do?" said B. Todd Jones, the group's co-chairman and a former U.S. attorney. "We already have a challenge getting people to come to the Great White North."
Maslon's managing attorney said she and others in her firm were mystified by the group's decision to deny them membership.
"We agree with their mission, absolutely agree with their mission," said Terri Krivosha, chairwoman of the Maslon firm's governance committee.
The diversity group formed about a year ago. It is made up of 19 law firms, including Briggs and Morgan, Dorsey & Whitney and Gov. Tim Pawlenty's former law firm, Rider Bennett. The group also includes the legal departments of 3M, Target, Best Buy, Medtronic and other major corporations.
The controversy centers on Maslon attorney Kirk Kolbo, who represented three University of Michigan applicants — two for an undergraduate program and one for the law school — who sued as part of a class action because of the school's raced-based admissions policies.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court preserved affirmative action in university admissions. The court upheld the law school admission process that included a "highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant's file" in which race counts as a factor but is not used in a "mechanical way."
But the court struck down the way Michigan handled its affirmative action program for admissions to its undergraduate college, which used a 150-point system to rank applicants and gave underrepresented minority students a 20-point boost.
Now, the diversity group's decision has morphed into a bit of a cause celebre for some conservatives and has dominated the legal trade press in recent weeks. The flap forced Hennepin County District Judge Tony Leung to resign as chairman before the vote to reject Maslon.
"I just decided that in the context of this issue and some of the recent publicity, I just thought it was time for me to in essence pass on the torch," Leung said.
Jones said he recognized that rejecting the Maslon firm put the diversity group in an odd position.
"People have a view of what diversity means and they say, 'Oh, my! They exclude a law firm for their representation of a client. Isn't that what lawyers do? Represent people sometimes with unpopular causes?' " Jones said.
But Jones, an attorney with Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, said the decision to reject the Maslon firm was a pragmatic one, not a rebuke on the agency's commitment to diversity. Jones said minority law students often associate the Maslon firm with its role in the affirmative action suit.
The Maslon firm intends to pursue its owns diversity efforts.
"To be honest, we are mystified by the whole thing," Krivosha said. "We applied and were rejected. We are moving on to work for an inclusive legal community and an inclusive law firm. Diversity is a bedrock of our firm."
Krivosha said four Jewish lawyers who couldn't get jobs at other firms 50 years ago started Maslon. The firm now is one of three major Twin Cities law firms with a female managing partner. About 29 percent of its lawyers are women and 5 percent are minorities.
For his part, Kolbo said he was upholding a basic premise of the legal system when he worked with the Michigan applicants.
"I have always thought one of the great privileges and obligations of a lawyer is to represent people with legal rights even if it's controversial or not popular," Kolbo said. "I am proud to work for a firm that agrees with that philosophy."
Kolbo also represented parents whose white children were denied admissions to St. Paul's Capitol Hill Magnet School even though they had passed admissions criteria and slots were open. The issue settled before trial days before Minnesota passed rules at that time putting an end to race-based admissions.
But Kolbo's passionate advocacy for his Michigan clients, comparing the white students with black civil rights pioneers who helped integrate schools, raised the scorn of some. A Detroit Free Press editorial writer called Kolbo's argument, "more than a racial insult. It's a big lie."
Diversity co-chairman Charles Ferrell, a lawyer with Faegre & Benson, said he hopes the controversy doesn't overshadow the group's mission and message.
"The real story, we think, is OK, yeah, we've had these complications," he said. "That seems to be newsworthy, but it's incredible the way the largest law firms — all competitors — and the law departments of the large corporations have all banded together and put a lot of time, attention and consistent follow-through working to make it better."
Liberal Hypocrite Lawyers bump
sue 'em!
-ccm
The big problem with most lawyers is that they are selfish.
They are concerned with their won/lost record and how that impacts their ability to get cases.
I think the original intent of our system was that guilty parties would be *represented* by legal counsel, but if they were guilty, that counsel would try to ensure they were treated fairly. This has morphed into trying to get them off, no matter what the case, conditions, or danger the defendent poses.
That's a great point. I would add that despite their claims to be acting in the interest of minorities, this move shows that these lawyers do not view minorities equally at all. They see the underrepresented minorities as child-like, so fragile that they must be protected from coming into contact with anyone from the law firm that represented the plaintiffs who challenged affirmative action.
How condescending!
5% minorities? Are they the right kind of minorities? How do we know they aren't including some Asian-Americans in the numbers? Or Cuban-Americans? There's minorities and then there's minorities...the diversity-mongers get to decide who counts.
An excellent suggestion. Of course it will have to be some other affirmative action admit since the California Medical board revoked his license for gross incompetence. Some years later he was murdered in LA.
I didn't know he'd been murdered. I did know his license was revoked for gross incompetence and fraud.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.