“Fear” Led Her to Fake 135 Billables On Honeymoon; Now Image the Headline Had She Been Black

Here is an example of privilege the legal profession affords those who aren’t black.
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As a second year associate at Faegre Baker Daniels, Mary Jaclyn Cook, falsified 135 billable hours while attending her wedding and Honeymoon in Hawaii and the Pacific.
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She’s since been fired from her law firm Faegre Baker Daniels. While this is scandalous, what is most striking to me is the focus and tone of this American Lawyer article, which places Faegre and the industry’s billing requirements on trial. Meanwhile, Jaclyn Cook, as she’s now known, is given victim status without ever raising the notion that this was a bold deceit and possible criminal act.
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From AmLaw:

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Michael Frisch, an ethics expert and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that while there is no excuse for overbilling, Cook’s tale is symptomatic of the billable hour pressures that associates face and the inherent conflict they create within firms, their lawyers and clients.

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“The whole idea of targeting billable hours, saying an attorney must work ‘X’ number of hours to stay employed, doesn’t encourage efficiency and it doesn’t encourage the most cost-conscious use of attorneys’ services for clients,” said Frisch, who spent 17 years as a grievance prosecutor for the District of Columbia’s Court of Appeals. “And that’s been widely recognized in the profession.”
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A spokeswoman for the firm said that failure to meet an annual billable hour expectation is not a basis for dismissal from Faegre Baker Daniels.
“We communicate regularly with associates on the standards and competencies by which they are evaluated, and offer many resources to help our lawyers build successful careers,” the firm said in a statement. “[Faegre Baker Daniels] also provides numerous outlets for associates who are concerned about their volume of work—high or low—including advisors, supervising partners, group leaders, office leaders and talent professionals.”

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“Jaclyn” now lists herself as executive director of the nonprofit National Cord Blood Initiative. I’m sure she’ll find funding and be afforded respect and trust in every boardroom she enters because it is black professionals who have to prove themselves over and over again. How did this woman from a middling law school (University of Denver) with no honors, major journal, or clerkship to her name manage to become an associate at an AmLaw 100 law firm in the first place?
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This when Asian American representation in law firms is triple that of black lawyers. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure Jaclyn and most lawyers are capable of handling law firm work as I believe those “standards” are in place merely to justify keeping certain groups out.
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Full disclosure here: I do have a bone to pick with American Lawyer, other legal publications, and the legal profession’s governing bodies and associations in general. Here those groups have twisted themselves into knots trying to justify Jaclyn’s bad acts. This infuriates me because the main reason I put my reputation and livelihood on the line in a discrimination lawsuit against Covington & Burling was to spark a conversation about the subjugation of black attorneys in Big Law. Guess what. No one cared.
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After I wrote “Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent if Jim Crow,” not a single article or panel ever saw fit to debate the ethics of law firms creating a lower-tier law group packed with black attorneys, many of whom had attended top 14 law schools. Why? Because the default thinking is that black people aren’t as smart or hardworking as Asian Americans. Well, think again.