Blind Faith
| Author | Danielle Bra |
| Pages | 32-33 |
32 || ABA JOURNAL OCTOBER 2018
Business of Law
Blind Faith
Several law firms
have embraced blind
recruiting as a means
of promoting diversity,
but does it work?
By Danielle Bra
Could the res umé
become an anachro-
nism? At some law
firms, par ticularly
in Canada and t he
United Kingdom, hiring partners
have embraced “blind re cruiting,”
removing identification deta ils from
candidat es’ resumés and applica tions
as a means of elimi nating potential
bias and promoting diversit y.
Following the lead of accou nting
firms such as Deloitt e and Ernst &
Young, as well as governmental a nd
financial ins titutions in Australia,
some firms are even usi ng programs
specializi ng in removing information
from resumés base d on hiring goals.
For example, if a firm is tr ying to
eliminate a bias t oward hiring male
attorneys, it ca n filter out resumés
from male applicants . If a firm is con-
cerned about hiri ng too many lawyers
from privilege d backgrounds, it can
rid the resumé of descr iptive hobbies.
In July, Lenczner Slaght Royce
Smith Grin, a Toronto law firm,
announced it would star t using blind
recruiting for its su mmer associates.
The firm, which has ab out 60 lawyers
and typica lly hires between five to
eight summer associat es, said it would
use softwa re to remove an applicant’s
name, accordi ng to the Canadian
Lawyer. The firm expre ssed hope that,
between this a nd subconscious bias
training, inter viewers would speak
with and hire a more d iverse crop of
law students—and that other firm s in
Canada would follow its lea d.
Some UK law firms have been usi ng
blind recruiting for sever al years. It
Hiring
applied on phones and PC s.
As an email repla cement, I also
looked for secure chat provider s that
had a minimum v iable product or MVP
(not Alpha or Beta softwa re); support
for Android, Apple iOS, Apple MacOS
X and Windows 10 operating syst ems;
and the capabilities t o encrypt file
transfers, suppor t oine messaging and
synchron ize messages bet ween devices.
Lastly, I looked for open-source sof t-
ware, which enables anyone t o audit
and verify the se curity of the code.
When I applied these filters to m arket
oerings, Briar, Line, R ing, Sicher,
Silent Circle, Suresp ot, Threema,
Tox and WhatsApp dropped out.
Signal, Wickr Me and W ire remained.
Although Wickr Me does not u se open-
source softwa re, like Signal and Wire,
the company opened its source co de
“wickr- crypto-c” to audit on GitHub.
If lawyers use end-to -end encrypted
chat, Simek recommends Sig nal, an
open-source project support ed by
grants and donations. It is f ree to use
and comes without ads a nd “creepy
tracking,” accord ing to its maker, Open
Whisper Syste ms. Users must first
install Sign al on a mobile device before
they set up a desktop version.
Signal’s Android client can be u sed
as your default messenger, so you don’t
have to monitor two chat apps. Sign al’s
iOS client and the Android and iOS
clients for Wickr Me and Wire s et up a
second messenge r app to monitor and
use on your device.
Signal, Wickr Me and W ire support,
ephemeral, ti me-to-live message s.
Lawyers must add ress this disappear-
ing act to store client c ommunications
in matter manag ement applications
Although lawyer s can screen capture
fleeting messages in a ll the apps and
file them with par ticular matters,
such a manual process for c apturing
and stori ng client communications
is bound to fail. Q
Sean La Roque-D oherty is a lawy er
practicin g in New York City who tests
and revi ews technology and h as written
about the le gal tech industry for mor e
than 15 years.
“was incorporat ed to help combat any
unconscious biases th at interviewers may
bring into the process ,” says Catherine
Morgan-Guest, a g raduate recruitment
manager at Macfa rlanes based in London.
Macfarlanes, w hich has more than
300 lawyers, introduced blind recruiting
in 2014. When recruiting for the new
trainee intake , the graduate recruitment
team sees al l the resumés, but the asses-
sors on the assessment days don’t even get
to glance at them. “ Three-quarters of the
assessment day is conducted C V-blind,
including the writ ten, group and in-tray
tasks,” Morgan-Gue st says. “This means
that a large par t of a candidate’s assess-
ment is based on their act ual performance
on the day, which we believe promotes
greater fairness.”
A firm spokesperson says t here’s been
an increase in d iverse candidates going
through to asse ssment days, with this past
September’s trainee inta ke expected to be
the most diverse to date .
Cliord Chance ha s started doing blind
interview s in its London oce, meaning
the interviewer s don’t see information
about the candidate be fore the interview.
“This is to reduce a ny potential for bias
during this sta ge,” says Laura Yeates, head
of graduate talent at C liord Chance.
“We need to always make sure w e hire the
very best cand idates, regardless of the
institution of study, degree d iscipline or
backgrou nd.”
Since it adopted this approa ch in 2014,
Yeates says, it’s seen the number of insti-
tutions from which it rec eives applica-
tions—and made hires f rom—increase.
A firm spokesperson says one yea r after
adopting blind recru iting, the firm hired
trainees from 41 di erent education insti-
tutions—a rise of nearly 30 perc ent com-
pared to the prev ious year.
NOT SO FAST
In an October 2016 study, resumés
from fictitious students a t nonelite law
schools were sent to more than 300 law
firm oces in 14 cities, a ssigning signals
of social class ba ckground and gender to
otherwi se identical resumé s. The higher-
class men received sign ificantly more call-
backs tha n anyone else.
Names are also impor tant. In a 2003
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