Just so you know, Jeff Rowes’s first appearance in court (any court, ever) was when he found and took over a free-speech case after a bad panel decision, en banc’ed it, and argued the case to all 15 judges of the Sixth Circuit, winning by one vote — as a first-year staff attorney. His subsequent work has been of the same caliber.

So while you’re certainly entitled to your opinion about the quality of Jeff’s posts, your slur about his probable abilities as a lawyer was as ill-informed as it was ill-mannered.

Splunge: Libertarian litigators. I love it. I am reminded of Richard Stallman’s GNU Publc License, a widget that uses copyright law to prevent copyrighting of GNU and GNU-derived code.

Libertarian =/= anarchist

Sure, that requirement likely will, as a generalization, exclude many more folks over 40 than folks under 40. Which means it would be a “disparate impact” type of case. But the Supreme Court has made it even harder for plaintiffs to win disparate impact suits under the ADEA than under Title VII, so it’s very unlikely such a suit would prevail. And indeed, it’s likely the real intent of the requirement here was to get people who you could pay less and require to do more grunt work.

Nick

Rowes’s posts lowered my opinion of IJ considerably, and if his is at all representative then IJ really does need all the help it can get.

My involvement with Institute for Justice attorneys has indicated that the Institute has some fine lawyers (I have encountered no clunkers) and that the Institute’s libertarianism is restrained by a conservatism of which it dares not speak.

Mr. Rowe did not strike me as the worst guest-blogger to have visited this precinct.

Why do they seek attorneys with only up to four years of litigation experience?

I think it makes much more sense to read it as a general idea of the responsibilities and qualifications that go along with the position, not as a firm declaration that no one with 49 months of litigation experience will be considered.

B.D.: Given the extremely low quality of your post, I think you should step away from your computer immediately.

See how easy it is to make a snarky yet completely thoughtless comment?

Snarky, sure, but I stand by the point. Rowes’s posts lowered my opinion of IJ considerably, and if his is at all representative then IJ really does need all the help it can get.

Age discrimination is prevalent throughout the legal profession. Apparently, law firms and corporations are not required to hire the best qualified person for the job.

I hate to tell you this, but nobody is required to hire the best-qualified applicant for anything. The only requirement is not to discriminate on the basis of specified characteristics. If you hired the best-qualified person (or the person whom you thought was best qualified), that is strong, but not conclusive, evidence that you did not discriminate. If you hired someone else instead, that can raise a question as to whether you relied on an illegal characteristic, but it does not prove that you discriminated. While it can be evidence that fits into the mosaic that a factfinder can decide establishes that you discriminated, the factfinder is not compelled to reach that conclusion, especially if there is evidence of some other non-discriminatory explanation.

Posts for jobs almost never say that they want someone with a minimum number of years experience without also including a maximum number. Also, you seldom see anyone posting a job looking for in excess of 10 years of experience.

yankee: Given the extremely low quality of the analysis in last week’s posts by the guestblogger from IJ, I think they need all the help they can get.

Given the extremely low quality of your post, I think you should step away from your computer immediately.

See how easy it is to make a snarky yet completely thoughtless comment?

bob:
Probably because they don’t pay much.

Yeah, engineering firms do this too, explicitly advertising “entry-level” positions. They usually don’t want to interview anyone with more than a few years experience for those positions, because the assumption is that senior people who accepted a job with entry-level pay would start off with one foot out the door.

Why do they seek attorneys with only up to four years of litigation experience?

Probably because they don’t pay much.