Lady Justice herself wears a blindfold to ensure impartiality, but today her newest acolytes today are scrutinizing race, gender and sexual orientation before they'll even write a brief. Of course, these new lawyers coming out of Stanford Law School aren't scrutinizing their prospective clients--at least, not that we know of. They're looking hard at their prospective employers. According to an Orwell-transcendent story in the New York Times, these students are ranking the nations top law firms according  to "how many female, minority and gay lawyers they have."
    Social engineering by any other name would smell as--well, would smell. The name of this social engineering project is Building a Better Legal Profession, and it does (smell). It's not a government project, of course; and there is no compulsion involved. But the inspiration behind this Brave New Control-Freakery is one any Soviet-style commissar rooting out "social deviancy" would recognize: turning human beings into game counters, with the game here being "diversity."
    "The students have ambitious plans," the Times reports, "including asking elite schools to restrict recruiting by firms at the bottom of their rankings. They also plan to send the rankings to the general counsels of the Fortune 500 companies with the suggestion that they be used in selecting lawyers."
    Skin color. Gender. Sexual orientation. The Right Proportions make a Better Legal Profession--or so these young geniuses, poised to start pocketing entry-level salaries of $160K, say. With their numbers-crunched, their percentages internalized, they will surely Make the World a Better Place for other Percentages--I mean, for people like them.
      For what this all seems to be about is the terrible guilt that must accompany the 25-year-old corporate tool into the highest economic echelon, the moneyed cocoon of the wealthy professional class.  If he--I mean, he, she or it--can bring Diversity with him--I mean, him, her or it--it makes it that much easier to pick up the Paycheck. When it comes to questions of social conscience, they can all say "I gave at the office,"
    The story concludes that the report card seems to be having an impact. "Mr. Bruck said a second-year student at Stanford had recently turned down an offer from a firm `as soon as he saw that it got an F on our diversity report card.' Professor Dauber said that the student, who is white and male, `is the poster boy for our effort.'"
    Poster boy, huh. All those brains and he doesn't recognize automatic obsolescence when he sees it--in the mirror.