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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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to even ask for these things reflects an entire misunderstanding of how work works, of the whole idea of a professional. You don't get extra time on assignments, the assignments exist and you get them done. If you don't complete the work necessary in your allotted hours, you have to finish it outside of your allotted hours. If your allotted hours produce less work than the average worker, you are less valuable than the average worker. At no point in the application process did this young man seem to think of the problem as "I'm going to need to work more hours" but always in terms of "You're going to have to go easy on me." I know it's the government, but still, there's not even the illusion of caring about productivity or value for a dollar.

A friend in a big city indigent defense office was telling me about the office hiring 2 recently-licensed attorneys who had attended top-10 law schools. Both ended up being unmitigated disasters who could not handle the work (that other attorneys from mediocre schools could handle). It appeared they had been "accommodated" for many years to get by and being given actual work with deadlines, clients, etc. was too much for them.

[There is the suspicion that anyone from a top-10 school applying to a public defense office is not the best from the school, but quite a few students end up doing that (or a prosecution job) to get a few years of trial work and showing they care about the little people or whatever before moving up in the world, so I don't think these two were from the bottom 10% of their schools (and per my friend, they had impressive transcripts/resumes).]

The alarming part of the story is that one went to HR and HR sided with them, resulting in their caseload being reduced and moved to other attorneys. This person is now being paid the same as those other attorneys to do much less work, and because of the way it all went down, all those other attorneys are very aware of everything that happened.

This sets up an unsustainable race to the bottom where every attorney is now incentivized to get a diagnosis and claim a need for accommodations to get less work, and any attorney who does not will end up with much more work. The justice system creaks along rather poorly, and defense offices are usually understaffed already. Requiring twice as many attorneys because caseloads are being cut in half to accommodate them is not practical, and it wouldn't be practical on the prosecution side, either (I haven't heard of it happening, but it seems like a matter of time until the knowledge of claiming a need for accommodation spreads).

People talk about it, but I don't think it has really sunk in for many what the legal system (or other systems) are going to look like when the Boomers/elder Xers are fully gone and they're replaced with people like those I discuss above.

The alarming part of the story is that one went to HR and HR sided with them, resulting in their caseload being reduced and moved to other attorneys. This person is now being paid the same as those other attorneys to do much less work, and because of the way it all went down, all those other attorneys are very aware of everything that happened.

Are you serious? I... didn't think it was possible for lawyers to hate money like this.

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