Yeah, But Can BigLaw et al. Handle Diversity

In his call for diversity, Jonathan Alger, General Counsel at Rutgers University, is no prophet in the wilderness. 

Research in network theory and practice, from Mark Granovetter in the 1970s to Duncan Watts today, clearly shows the power of non-homogeneous interaction.  "Letting in" those not exactly like us opens us to everything from atypical professional opportunities to breakthrough thinking. 

Intuitively The Networking President Bill Clinton knew that.  His network included God's Plenty and that paid off for him, in both his good times and bad. And we gotta reflect on this: Was it the homogeneous mindset in the financial markets that created the current global crisis?

Yet, the reality is that essentially we human kind are still tribal.  We feel safe and comfortable with "our own type."  If the discrimination lawsuit against Dechert by an Orthodox Jewish lawyer goes to trial, we will probably get an earful about how the differences of minority players tend to alienate the more mainstream ones. 

Also, I keep asking:  Did the three white-shoe defense attorneys during the the Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance trial [2005-2006] understand working-class ethos?  Providence, where the trial was held, and the majority of the jurors were blue-collar. The verdict went against those attorneys.  It did not go against the one who grew up lower middle class in Rhode Island - John Tarantino.  Jurors let Tarantino's client Atlantic-Richfield off the hook. In my interviews with them they praised "that Tarantino."

The good news is that the ongoing economic turmoil, dating back to the dot.com crash, is making us strange bedfellows.  Layoffs, firings for performance in a market with a higher bar, and technological changes which are eliminating whole industries are throwing us all together in the struggle to find work. From 2003 until 2004, I was employed as a contract security guard in inner-city Home Depot.  I attribute that experience as the cornerstone of my new success, including exploding creativity.  Here is my [free] e-book saluting the transformational process of being a worker among workers vs. a scrambler up some ladder Download Geezerguts.

My prediction: More hustlers and parents who realize that their children better learn to sing for their supper will be fleeing homogeneous places like Greenwich, Connecticut.  Dick Fuld's sad story captures what's so dangerous about splendid upper-middle class insulation from Everyman.  So, Greenwich folk, flag down a car on I-95 North and head here to ethically, economically, racially diverse New Haven, Connecticut.  Amazing: We help each other. When I lived in Fairfield County [Gold Coast], CT, we made a sport of hurting or at least impeding one another.

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[Happy Meal]

New Haven is famous for group think. It's an intellectual ghetto.