> the students’ statements don’t represent the firm’s values.<p>The firm’s values:<p>"John W. Davis's legal career is most remembered for his final appearance before the Supreme Court, in which he unsuccessfully defended the "separate but equal" doctrine in Briggs v. Elliott, a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education. Davis, as a defender of racial segregation and state control of education, argued that South Carolina had shown good faith in attempting to eliminate any inequality between black and white schools and should be allowed to continue to do so without judicial intervention." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Polk#Race_relations" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Polk#Race_relations</a>
I'm a First Amendment absolutist who doesn't like what is going on. Winston & Strawn and Davis, Polk & Wardell had decided that the law students qualified for job offers. That the firms decided that the students no longer qualified because of something, not violating the law, that the students are associated with is alarming.<p>That also goes for calls for a "nationwide boycott", however informal, by employers of students associated with the unpopular cause of the day, or demands by large donors for the resignations of university leaders that did not insufficiently condemn pro-Hamas words by others associated with the universities.<p>(And yes, despite the large-scale infiltration of leftist anti-Semitism into academia and politics in recent decades that has now hugely backfired on the Jews that were among its aiders and abetters, support of Hamas is still the unpopular cause, relatively speaking. But not as unpopular as it ought to be.)
This is understandable as it shows an incredible lack of critical thinking on the student's part. Being an effective lawyer means not knee jerk reacting.
This was not the first. It appears that several attorneys have had job offers rescinded due to comments made regarding the conflict.<p><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/10/10/nyu-law-student-ryna-workman-lose-job-offer-israel-hamas-comments/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/10/10/nyu-law-student-ryna-...</a><p><i>A prominent international law firm has rescinded its job offer to NYU Law School Bar Association student president Ryna Workman over “inflammatory” comments regarding the deadly weekend attacks on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas.</i><p>Here it was the law firm of Winston & Strawn in Chicago.
"On Tuesday, the firm said it was reconsidering that decision for two of the three students, who fought their dismissals and said that they did not authorize the letters, which did not have any individual signatories."<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/17/business/davis-polk-employment-columbia-harvard-israel-palestine.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/17/business/davis-polk-emplo...</a>
As a Columbia Law grad who spent time in biglaw, this is actually kind of surprising. Law firms, to a degree that surprised me, don't really like to jeopardize their reputation with the top law schools (I'm thinking here the top 6, of which Columbia and Harvard are 2).<p>I think there's likely a confluence of factors here[0]:<p>a) Firm might feel clients don't want people who signed the letter to work on their matters (and clients, stupidly and surprisingly, do ask and care about which rando individual associates work on their matters).<p>b) Some people are taking massive license with this latest terrorist attack on Israel to make bold-faced calls for violence and air a lot of bigotry, and large segments of society are letting them get away with it.<p>A lot of people have been dismayed to see criticism of Israel and acknowledgement of its role in exacerbating the conflict becoming more common in general; at the moment, they have the opportunity to silence a lot of dissent on this issue once again, and are only helped by statements as ridiculous and extreme as letters pinning blame on the conflict <i>solely</i> on Israel.<p>c) Big law jobs are shrinking after a period where law firms felt they couldn't get enough elite law talent, and now market power is moving to the firms once again.<p>d) It should be noted that Davis Polk is major prestige and thus less likely to have to give a fuh about reputation among law schools and law students than most law firms. Nobody except the most dedicated partisan is going to boycott Davis Polk over this.<p>In talking to career people at Columbia, there was this assumption that for some of the "lesser" big law firms, such as the one I ended up at, which were lower in both prestige and the number of CLS grads they hired, it was possible for the firm to piss Columbia off and get kicked out of Columbia's OCI and that this would be a bigger L for the firm than for Columbia. Not the case for Davis Polk.<p>[0] I'm not commenting on whether move was reasonable or appropriate. I can make arguments various ways on that issue, personally. I'm just thinking of this more descriptively.
> These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values<p>Signing something without charging money?<p>> At this time, we remain in dialogue with two of these students to ensure that any further color being offered to us by these students is considered<p>What does this even mean?
isn't it telling that the law office is not named individually, but named in a collective identity as "Top law firm" ? This literally says "you are being punished by the indisputable authority" .. for signing a considered letter of opinion ! let's be very clear about what is happening.. not the subject of the conflict, but the effects on collective public expression