This weekend and on through Tuesday, the NFL holds its annual scouting combine in Indianapolis. For those who don't listen to sports talk radio or watch ESPN or the NFL Network every day (and yet, inexplicably, read my posts, I mean, really, how do you understand anything I write?), the Combine is where all 32 NFL teams inspect prospective NFL rookies up close, before the draft. Teams evaluate invited draft-eligible players, who participate in numerous drills, undergo extensive medical testing and analysis, psychological evaluations, and one-on-one interviews. Imagine a job interview, cattle auction, Battle of the Network Stars, and your annual physical exam, all on the same weekend. [sidebar: did you know that Lynda Carter and Farrah Fawcett were both on the same ABC team the same year for "Stars"? And that Adrienne Barbeau was on the CBS team? How is this not considered the greatest TV show of all time?] They outfit the players in tight, skimpy shorts and shirts, leaving little to the imagination (ok, I noticed it, what are you getting at?), and run them around all over the field, performing position-specific workouts: throwing drills, passing drills, blocking drills, three-cone shuttle runs, 40 yard dashes, and the like. There's strength tests (e.g. number of reps bench pressing 225 pounds). They're measured, weighed, inspected from head to toe for injuries and strength deficiencies. Often they're required to undergo MRIs or CT scans. Teams may interview the players privately, and each player must take what amounts to an IQ test. The point of the Combine is to bring the entire draft "class" together in one location, and work everyone out side by side to make comparisons. The theory is that simply watching the tape of their college games does not accurately predict their likely pro success, particularly if they played at a smaller school that did not face major college competition, or if their college teams employed defensive or offensive schemes that pro teams do not use. And all the while, agents vulturistically hover over the players, hoping to sign up as many as possible.
With all the poking and prodding and prying and peering and propositioning, its like one extended human resources violation. Does the EEOC know about all this? Hey, if Bill Clinton hired interns this way...uh, never mind. Too easy. Like a certain girl in a blue dress...(sorry, that's also too cheap. So was she. AARRGGHHH!).
OK, let's get back on message here.
This sure is interesting way to make hiring decisions. Its not like all the prospective plumbers go to some building and fix a bunch of leaks while plumbing company owners watch them.
It made me think about how law firms hire new lawyers. True, some lawyers still graduate from law school and hang up a shingle the day after they pass the bar, but not many. Most still work at a firm, or government agency, or for some other attorney, for at least a year or two before striking out on their own (if they go that route). That means thousands of established lawyers have to decide which fledgling lawyers to hire, and which ones to throw back into the lake. And that's where it gets tricky. For everyone.
I know this may come as something of a shock, particularly for people like me who look at the calendar every year around December 15th and are shocked to learn its almost Christmas ("again? Seems like it was just Christmas a couple of months ago!"). But most lawyers simply lack basic skills, well, in anything except actual lawyering. They generally lack even rudimentary business skills, can't communicate normally with most non-lawyers (e.g. "we should consider three factors in deciding which movie to see tonight. Factor 1: proximity of theatre...."), and they sure don't know how to hire prospective hires.
Usually, there's an on campus or in office interview session, with one or more lawyers, which always works as more of an audition than an actual interview. The candidate basically performs to the interviewers, trying to get noticed. Its like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School, appearing before all the professors who administer an "oral exam." Or a seal balancing a ball on its nose to amuse the Sea World crowds. 90% of the interview questions that lawyers asked me when I was interviewing for jobs was along the lines of "what can I tell you about our firm"? Which means they had no idea what they were looking for, no idea who I was, and no real way to choose between me or the next guy right behind me in a similar suit and tie outfit (what my brother Ron would refer to, for a lawyer, as the "second skin").
Then there's some sort of lunch or dinner component, where they try to see whether you have good table manners and can carry on a conversation. Which is pretty funny, because have you had dinner with a lawyer? You probably said no, mainly because it was either so boring or so painful that your mind simply erased it from your memory. Rat and Stacy's date at the Italian place in Fast Times at Ridgmont High where he forgot his wallet was like 20 times less awkward than one of these interview lunches. "Two more cokes."
But in fairness to my colleagues, predicting who will become a good lawyer is tricky business. Grades don't really show who will become a good lawyer; neither does your Bar exam score. When's the last time anyone ever asked their lawyer how they scored on the Bar exam? Answer: never. The smartest, first hand in the air for every question, law review editor, who you'd think would make the best lawyer ever, often turns out to be such a nimrod you can't let them within 100 yards of a client. Or a judge. The person with the worst grades from the worst law school sometimes goes on to become an enormously successful career. Hell, one of the greatest Supreme Court justices of the last century, Robert Jackson, didn't even go to law school. So it often comes down to subjective things like whether they can string two sentences together that make sense, or whether they know where the library is (that last one's archaic I guess; maybe now its whether they know how to find evidence on the internet).
The problem really comes down to this: we don't evaluate new lawyers by seeing how they perform the jobs lawyers really do. Asking someone why they're interested in maritime law, for example, tells you nothing about how well they could practice maritime law. No wonder so many lawyers hate being lawyers. They don't fit their chosen practice field or their firms, hate what they're doing, and they hate the people they're doing it with. So they often careen around from place to place, searching for that elusive "good fit."
So how about, rather than using the same old ineffectual process, we hire new lawyers based on how they perform against each other, doing the things they'll do when they become lawyers? Why not have a Lawyer Combine? This way, employers would gain a better idea how a candidate truly stacks up against the competition from not just their own school but from everywhere, doing what they'll do once you hire them.
You could do it just like the NFL Combine. Get all of that year's law school graduates together in the same town, and run them all through Combine drills, just like in football. Every law firm or corporation or government agency looking to hire new lawyers could attend.
At my Lawyer Combine, everyone would go through the same drills. First, I'd measure and weigh them. No sense hiring some Lurch that's going to scare the hell out of clients and judges.
Then everyone would take a complete physical. You know, look for things like eczema or psoriasis, or something really gross that will make it impossible to be around them hours at a time getting ready for trial or working on a big deal. Or sensitivity to alcohol (which, you figure, isn't a problem because they made it through three years of law school, which means they're well on their way to alcoholism already). Or migraine headaches or vision problems that will prevent them from reading and writing teeny tiny fine print. Or heart problems that might leave them incapable of absorbing excessive stress. (I know, usually they just hand out those squeezy balls or a miniature zen rock garden and tell you to have at it, but in practice, that mostly doesn't do the trick).
Everyone would take a psych exam. As a profession, lawyers have just about the highest depression rates. You don't want your new lawyer cracking under stress. Nor do you want to hire people constantly consumed by remorse. No, you want people who can take a set of facts and connect them in a way most favorable to whomever is paying you. So you need to see just how jazzed they really are about a life spent evicting kids from the orphanage, defending crack heads or soon-to-be ex-spouses hell bent on napalming each others' lives, or protecting insurance companies' and banks' profits. I'm sure the SS or the Committee to Re-Elect the President probably had some profiling tests to find out who's most receptive to following orders. We could use those.
The hiring lawyers could interview anyone they want, just like they do now. Except we'd limit interviews to five minutes, so you'd have to get to your one good question really fast and not waste your time on nonsense like "why do you want to be a lawyer" or "what can we tell you about us." I see employers getting to the really good stuff fast, like "is your mother still a prostitute" or "do you rat on your friends" or "do you like to party"? You know, the things lawyers really want to know.
Then we'd run them through a series of physical drills that simulate a lawyer's daily lifestyle: the whiskey fetch and carry (points off for spilling), sleep deprivation file memo writing, matching the right suit with the right tie, coffee consumption max drill, 30 second client ass kiss, yelling at one's staff employees two criteria here: volume and insult creativity), explaining proper semi-colon (what most of you just use as the "wink" symbol) usage, hiding your mistress, and devising clever ways to write off dubious "business expenses."
Like the NFL Combine, we'd use "position specific" drills too.
Prospective family lawyers would demonstrate their skills in letting their paralegal answer all client calls, being late for hearings, spending most of the day drunk, and explaining why the divorce/custody orders aren't ready yet (most believably creative wins).
Personal injury lawyers would demonstrate their ability to persuade injury victims to sign fee agreements while still in the emergency room or on pain medicine, to detect sirens at distance, to devise the most "nothing to do with the case" story used effectively in closing argument, and, within 30 second, list synonyms for the word "victim." And "heartless" (as in "this evil, heartless corporation stopped for nothing, leaving a worldwide trail of greed whose sides were strewn with innocent victims like my client, Suzy Welfarecheat [from the original Welsh, no doubt], who sits before you today unable to feel her thighs, all because McDonald's refused to warn her its coffee was hot.").
Environmental lawyers would look at a sickly endangered species animal and diagnose its weakness (and then talk it through recovery), review particle concentrate readings and compare them against the related emission permits, play a Grateful Dead version of "Name That Tune," and find the best bargain on hiking sandals at Whole Earth Provision.
Corporate or finance lawyers could take turns putting bricks to sleep through conversation, spotting the rogue, improperly placed comma in a 912 page single-spaced word, document (see what I did just there?), and correctly identifying the "eggshell" colored dress shirt hidden among a dozen "ivory" shirts.
Finally, criminal lawyers could list ways to keep their client's trunk full of cocaine out of evidence, to call the entire prosecution a "racial conspiracy," or to explain why their client accidentally ran over her husband. Three times. (By the way, Clara, I'm waiting for you to get out. Call me!).
Now this beats the hell out of spending an incredibly awkward half hour with someone, who looks and sounds exactly like the last five young lawyers you just interviewed, grasping at straws to figure out who will make the best hire. I may need to tweak it slightly to deal with those pesky human resources laws (damn Congress, always screwing up everything). But if the NFL can get away with it, surely the nation's best lawyers can figure out how to make this work. After all, we run things.
But you get the general idea.
OK
Next-More Odessa Tales or college football.
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