Deborah L. Rhode (1952–2021)

Best for:
People who enjoy the academic rigor of a peer-reviewed book, but actually want to enjoy reading said book. Also, people who find the idea of cheating (in all its forms) fascinating.

In a nutshell:
Law professor and legal ethicist Rhode examines why people cheat, and what society can do to mitigate those tendencies.

Worth quoting:
“Totally honest, incorruptible people constitute about 10 percent of the population. Totally dishonest people who will cheat in a wide variety of situations account for about 5 percent. The other 85 percent appear basically honest, but will succumb to temptation depending on the situation.”

Why I chose it:
I love ethics — studying it, reading about it, thinking about it. Unlike everyone in The Good Place, I love moral philosophy professors. And while I’ve read articles and books on many different topics in ethics, I hadn’t seen one focused solely on cheating.

Review:
Have you ever stacked your ships in the same line in Battleship? Have you ‘forgotten’ to report to the IRS the cash earnings from nannying during graduate school? Have borrowed your sorority sister’s paper for the class you’re in, which she got a 4.0 in a year prior?

Have you ever cheated?

In this book, Rhode examines multiple types of cheating, spending a chapter on each. She looks at not just what many of you probably thought of when you saw the title — adultery — but also cheating in sports, at work, on taxes, at school, and committing copyright infringement and cheating related to insurance claims and mortgage applications.

Each chapter offers examples of the types of cheating in that particular area, then looks at what might cause it, and then crucially, what might be an effective way of preventing it. In some cases, that is increasing the punishment (such as corporate malfeasance), while in other areas it means getting creative (such as with making music widely available for low subscription fees).

As you read this, you might balk at some things that she considers cheating, while other things will be very clear. I know so many people who illegally download music and films and see no problem with it, and would be shocked that it is included in such a book. Others might find her stance on how to punish marital infidelity — personally, not legally or financially — to lenient. I think you can make arguments on all sides. But it’s interesting to read and to really think through, especially given who the US President and GOP leadership are right now (and this book came out last year, so the US President is mentioned a few times).

While the book is over 200 pages, it is so thoroughly backed up with research that the notes take up 60 of those pages. It is a pretty quick and easy read, given the subject matter.

Keep it / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it, because while I enjoyed it, I can’t see myself reading it again.… (mehr)

The state of play is a reiteration of what we already know: women are still being passed over or withheld from leadership positions in business. This is for well-known and understood reasons. Reasons well known and understood by anyone of middle-income or below who are moderately educated (this leaves out the current Republican nominee for President, but more on that later). Women's professional careers suffer with marriage (men's do not) because women remain responsible for a majority of child care and domestic duties. Women also tend to take off time from their careers to have children (for various lengths of time) and find that their employer or profession is no longer interested in women's capabilities, only in their possibly divided attention from the job towards her family (an interest that men do not face) or their possible lack (atrophy) of qualifications. Furthermore, women are stereotyped as not being able to lead, or are considered more relationally motivated than decision motivated (and heaven help her if she is determined and motivated...she will be considered a bitch). There really is nothing new in this 2007 volume that isn't already known or stated by other researchers. Any stereotype, or any concerns about a woman's relationship/procreative status or leadership abilities, are simply bogus! Now, go tell that to the men occupying the corner office on Wall Street and see how fast you are met with laughter and escorted out the front doors. The practices are unfair and detrimental to women, and every effort should be taken to contradict and countermand these practices in order to create a level field of opportunity for everyone (did I mention those men in the corner offices are white?).

My concern is that all the women and leadership literature, all giving very valid points, continue to measure and define professional success in ideas established by the patriarchal business establishment long ago. Every researcher wants to know why there are not more women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Excuse me, but what if I do not want to be a CEO? I have every intention of being extremely successful in my career, but the opportunity to schmooze with Donald Trump is not my idea of success. My professional life has very little to do (directly) with Wall Street. By measuring women's success on terms established by men, advocating, dispelling, or flagrantly calling bullshit on gendered nonsense by the likes Romney & Co., Inc., renders the point moot. Get a different measurement, please. Time to take a poststructuralist feminist stand and trouble notions of gender and success, redefining them in a manner which have only a gentle nod toward the Wall Street corner office.

If you're wondering why I feel this reconceptualization of success is necessary, it's because I am tired of Wall Street cronies. They have bankrupted our economy twice (with numerous recessions in-between) through greedy practices, all the while holding a belief that they know what is best for everyone. And I am not talking just about best for everyone's retirement portfolio. I mean in all situations, all the time, for everyone. Why? Because Wall Street cronies are largely arrogant. With that, I now return to the subject of the Republican nominee for President of the United States, Mitt Romney.

I have listened to Mitt speak/debate throughout the party nomination process, and now must listen to him speak and debate against President Obama until November. (Oh, goodie!!! I hope I have enough wine to make it through the experience. When I awake post-election, I hope I will be able to chalk the feeling up to a hangover and not the realization that my country will be run by a bullying, bigoted frat boy.) My conclusion of Mr. Romney is that he just does not get it. And, what is worse, he will never get it. And the reason he will never get it is because Wall Street culture does not get it and has no desire to change the fact that it does not get it.

Let me see if I can be more clear....

Romney has no relation to reality by virtue of the Wall Street business culture upon which he boasts, and upon which he has built is economic campaign. Take a looksie at corporate culture:

- Lack of women in decision-making and leadership positions
- Lack of cultural, ethnic, gender, sexual diversity in the top offices giving corporate culture a distorted and discriminatory view of the structure of society as a whole
- Inflated CEO salaries compared to lower-level posts (lower-level posts most likely to be occupied by women and minorities)
- Corporate tendency to only concentrate on the bottom line meaning that they only want to know how women and minorities will be profitable to them...period
- Wall Street is an Old Boys Network that sees humor, camaraderie, and strength in a way perceived as crude, aggressive, competitive, and intimidating to women and minorities
- Corporate culture is likely to operate on stereotypes creating an "Us versus Them" dichotomy where the "other" is perceived as a distrusted outsider not worth their time, an operational attitude buoyed through flagrant displays of tokenism to convince onlookers, whistleblowers, judges, and legislatures how "fair" they are ("I have a good relationship with the blacks." - Donald Trump, 2011; "Our blacks are better than their blacks." - Ann Coulter, 2011)
- Corporate culture's ultimate aim is to squash the competition...bankrupt them, or buy and dispose of them while reaping the profits (only to be shared amongst their friends)

All of these points are Wall Street justifications for withholding opportunities for advancement. Needless to say, I am not impressed by Romney's record at Bain Capital. It gives me the creeps. Corporate culture is not a formula for leading my democratic republic which boasts a constitution that guarantees everyone the opportunity to pursue happiness.

Excuse me, I need a glass of wine.… (mehr)

Being a lawyer myself, I couldn't resist asking for an ARC of a book provocatively titled The Trouble with Lawyers. The publisher's description is perhaps, with the one exception discussed below, the most accurate description of a book I have ever seen:

"Deborah Rhode's The Trouble with Lawyers is a comprehensive account of the challenges facing the American bar. She examines how the problems have affected (and originated within) law schools, firms, and governance institutions like bar associations; the impact on the justice system and access to lawyers for the poor; and the profession's underlying difficulties with diversity. She uncovers the structural problems, from the tyranny of law school rankings and billable hours to the lack of accountability and innovation built into legal governance - all of which do a disservice to lawyers, their clients, and the public.

The Trouble with Lawyers is a clear call to fix a profession that has gone badly off the rails, and a source of innovative responses."

Nothing Rhode says is new; I faced the same issues when I started practicing law 28 years ago. However, Rhode provides, in a short 149 pages, a remarkably crisp and cogent analysis of the problems which continue to haunt our profession.

My disagreement with the publisher's summary comes with its suggestion that Rhode's book is "a source of innovative responses." Most of Rhode's proffered "solutions" are more aspirational than practical; she calls repeatedly, for example, for attorneys and law firms to engage in, and reward, pro bono work, but she simultaneously notes that firms "driven by relentless preoccupation with short-term profits" are unlikely to be truly enthusiastic about attorneys diverting their attention away from billable hours. I was most intrigued by her suggestions regarding legal education (such as a multi-tier approach based on the nature of the student's intended practice), which is not surprising given her position as a professor at Stanford Law School; I have not had the opportunity to view legal academia from the inside, so I value Rhode's insights.

In her conclusion, Rhode notes that part of her central premise is "that the public can no longer afford to leave issues of lawyer regulation solely in the hands of the organized bar," and she is absolutely correct; many of the impediments to equal access to justice are a function of the allocation of scarce taxpayer resources, and that situation will not change unless the public, not just the profession, recognizes the need for such change. Thus, I would hope that The Trouble with Lawyers will find its way into the hands of laypeople. Unfortunately, I see two major obstacles here. First, my (perhaps incorrect) perception of Oxford University Press is that it is primarily an academic press, unfamiliar to the general public. Second, and more importantly, a lay audience needs to be able to put a human face on such abstract ideals as "access to justice," yet Rhode provides real-life examples only in support of her argument that bar disciplinary agencies should not treat acts committed in an attorney's personal life as automatic proof of that attorney's attitude toward her professional responsibilities. I suspect that most laypeople don't particularly care if an attorney is disciplined unfairly.

Notwithstanding my overall positive review of The Trouble with Lawyers, I must take issue with Rhode's approving partial quotation from Linda Addison's 2014 keynote address to Texas Women in Law. The full quote by Ms. Addison, the first woman to be named U.S. Managing Partner of Norton Rose Fulbright (one of the world’s three largest law firms), is as follows:

"The most important career decision you will ever make has both everything and nothing to do with your job – and that decision is who you marry. If your career is not as important to your partner as it is to you, you don’t stand a chance."

Having devoted a substantial portion of her book to the issues faced by women attorneys, whose need to fulfill family responsibilities is regularly equated by law firm management with a lack of commitment to the practice, Rhode surely cannot intend seriously to suggest that young women should consider the current realities of law firm practice in deciding whom they will marry. This advice reeks of the "put up or get out" mentality I faced as a law firm associate almost 30 years ago; if successful women attorneys are still espousing this position in 2015, the legal profession is even worse off than Rhode indicates.

I received a free copy of The Trouble with Lawyers through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.… (mehr)