OF POLISHED SHOES AND
INTERVIEWS:
WHY NONE DARE
"SHINE IT ON"
by Liz
Nevis
According to statements at recent
seminars, career-services offices at law schools
apparently receive several outraged letters every
year from law-firm recruiters who have had their
refined sensibilities scandalized by
interviewees' flagrant display of insufficiently polished shoes.
Why
is footwear albedo such a leading indicator of legal
talent? Unfortunately, I could not
locate
and ask anyone who actually knew, because
career-services are averse to disclosing, and online
databases have not yet realized the usefulness of
disclosing, the names and affiliations of the
recruiters who write these mysterious letters. Fortunately, some fictional characters I made
up
were happy to speculate.
Sister Anne Hedonia,
Our Lady of
lady, are you still making trouble? I've got my eye on you, believe you me, and I
just sharpened
the cast-iron edge on my trusty ruler. Have you forgotten everything I beat into
you? Those
interviewers just want you to polish
your shoes so they can see your underwear reflected in them.
Nobody
wants a lawyer with raggedy underwear - what if you're in a car accident on the
way to
court? Now say
three rosaries and beg the good Lord's forgiveness for questioning
authority."
Vegan Righteous, Executive Producer,
Wildlife Voyeur Documentaries: "The common
magpie, which exhibits surprising intelligence on a
par with that of some law-firm recruiters, is
fascinated by shiny objects. Just as the magpie collects dropped coins,
bits of aluminum foil, and
the occasional Mercedes hubcap to decorate its
nest, the recruiter seeks to collect individuals who
will walk back and forth past its office wearing
highly-polished shoes, thus offering it constant
fascinating entertainment and winning it the envy of
other recruiters whose offices are less gaily
decorated."
I.M.
Greedy, former CEO of ScamCo International, now
serving time in federal prison:
"I'm
not sayin' I know anything, ‘cause
I don't know nothin', see? But if I was you, although
I'm
not, y' understand, I'd look at whose pension funds are heavily sunk into
shoe-polish stock,
that's all's I'm sayin'. Now willya talk to
the screws in this joint and see if they'll get a better
wine vintage in the cafeteria? That ‘93 Sacremerde
swill they serve us is 50% frickin'
antifreeze,
and I oughta know - I
bought the winery in ‘91 and made ‘em put it
in."
Gray Dullnormal,
Under-Vice-Subsecretary of Annals Retention,
Paperwork Proliferation
Agency: "In 1993, after decades of lobbying by the
Justice League, Congress passed the
Americans
with Super Powers Act, prohibiting employment discrimination based on unusual
talents inexplicable to science. Top-tier law firms vehemently opposed the
provision that made it
illegal for interviewers to ask candidates any
questions whose answers might indicate that the
candidate had, or did not have, super powers. The firms argued that their traditional
requirement
that new associates be, at a bare minimum, hydroambulatory (able to walk on water) was
essential to serve clients who typically ‘need a
miracle every day.' Alas, their wailing,
gnashing
of teeth, and rending of garments (both their own
and those of unsuspecting passersby) availed
them not. Not
only are customer-preference arguments notoriously weak against anti-
discrimination law, but the firms
could never organize an effective coalition due to the rabid-
raccoons-in-a-pillowcase nature of the
professional and personal relationships involved. It has
come to our attention, though, that some such firms
now attempt to end-run regulations by
recruiting during the rainy season and colluding
with law schools to reserve all nearby parking
spaces for hordes of fictitious VIPs on interview
days. The interviewer may thus
surreptitiously
identify hydroambulatory
candidates by the radiant and immaculate condition of their foot-
coverings after a forced slog through the miles of
mud between available parking and the
interview site.
A notice-and-comment rulemaking has been initiated to close this
loophole, but
regrettably most of the comments received to date
are unprintable."
Dr. Robynn Graves,
chief anthropologist, Burke & Hare Excavation Consultants: "We
believe that ‘Palsgraf
Man,' the unidentified skeleton found beneath an abandoned railroad scale
outside Kissing Butte, Wyoming, belonged to an
ancient lawyering cult. Before the superstitious
townspeople insisted on his immediate reburial to
‘stop the evil,' we had noted that the only
funerary objects found with the remains were a
briefcase filled with Babylonian-style clay
cuneiform tablets - used well into the 1930's
under court rules founded on pervasive distrust of
modern technology - and a dozen pairs of shoes, their
still-perfect mirror finish produced by
some method unknown to modern civilization."
Joe Jim Jake
Spittoon, member of the public: "I wish lawyers would quit wearin' them
shiny shoes at trials, if'n
you ask me. What with the glare off'n them danged things the whole
time, how's a body supposed to get any sleep in that
there jury box?"