[Summary]The Tortoise and the Hare | Revisionist History | Malcolm Gladwell - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu2WQLEHBPQ
Part 1:
This episode of Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" podcast, titled "The Tortoise and the Hare," is primarily a critique of the American legal education system and its process of selecting the most promising candidates.
Key takeaways:
Overreliance on 'Hares': Gladwell uses the famous Aesop's fable "The Tortoise and the Hare" as a metaphor to challenge the current system of law school admissions, arguing that it excessively favours 'hares' (those who perform well under time pressure), as demonstrated by the Law School Admission Test (LSAT).
LSAT's Flawed Design: According to Gladwell, the LSAT, a critical element in law school admissions, is flawed because it primarily measures a candidate's ability to solve complex problems quickly. It's a 'race' where processing speed often trumps understanding, favouring 'hares' over 'tortoises'.
Justice Scalia's Contradictory Statement: The episode highlights a speech from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, wherein he explains his preference for law clerks from elite law schools. However, he simultaneously acknowledges that one of his best clerks was Jeffrey Sutton, a 'tortoise' who didn't perform exceptionally well on the LSAT and studied at a non-elite law school (Ohio State).
Supreme Court Clerkship Favors 'Tortoises': The role of a Supreme Court clerk requires methodical, detail-oriented work, which arguably favours 'tortoises' more. They must read and understand complex documents slowly and thoroughly, the exact opposite of what the LSAT measures.
The Paradox: The episode underscores the paradox in the American legal education system where law school students from non-elite schools (like American University) are often overlooked for prestigious positions (like Supreme Court clerkships) despite the fact that the job actually suits their 'tortoise' abilities better.
Overall, the takeaway from part 1 of the episode is a critique of the American legal education system for its undue focus on speed and immediate performance (the 'hares') rather than on methodical understanding and long-term potential (the 'tortoises').
Part 2:
Here are the key takeaways from Part 2 of your audio transcript:
The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) operates for over 70 years, creating and administering the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). The process to create a single item on the test, ensuring it's the "right kind of hard", takes 36 months. Any question that shows biases, for instance, gender bias, is discarded.
Despite the care taken to ensure fairness in the LSAT questions, the test's timing is standardized, and there's an imposed time limit for each section. This timing structure could potentially discriminate against certain types of test-takers, especially those who prefer to take their time (the "tortoises") over those who work faster (the "hares").
There's a suggestion to extend the LSAT to 125 percent of its current length, reducing time pressure for a significant number of test takers. However, this change could disrupt the bell curve used by law schools for admissions and compel them to rely less on the LSAT score and more on other admission considerations.
An alternate suggestion is to make the LSAT harder but lift the time pressure. However, this could end up favoring the "tortoises" over the "hares", which isn't desirable as both types of individuals are needed in the field of law.
The immense pressure on the LSAT score is primarily because a small number of elite law schools are the primary target of applicants. This leads to intense competition for limited slots, arguably an "absurdity of American meritocracy."
A point of comparison is made to the University of Toronto in Canada, considered the country's most elite university. Despite being an elite institution in a country of 35 million people, it has a large undergraduate enrollment, contrasting with the limited slots in American elite law schools.
Part 3:
The best schools in Canada, such as the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, and McGill University, are known for their high-quality education but don't have an arbitrary limitation on student enrollment. Instead, they've expanded to accommodate more students, unlike their U.S counterparts that limit student intake despite high demand.
William Anderson and Evan Parker, law school professors and researchers, apply a "Moneyball" approach to law firm hiring. This entails using data-driven techniques to determine who the successful people are in any law firm and then work backwards to identify the ideal law school graduate likely to become a good lawyer. The conventional hiring approach at law firms is flawed, as it often involves selecting candidates who are similar to the interviewers rather than those who are likely to be successful attorneys.
Traditional interviewing techniques at law firms aren't predictive of an attorney's success. A partner's initial rating of a law student during an interview is no better than a coin flip at predicting their success and retention at the firm. This demonstrates a need for better hiring proxies that can more accurately predict a lawyer's future success.
Factors such as blue-collar work experience, when combined with good law school performance, can be meaningful predictors of a successful lawyer. However, these aren't always considered in the hiring process.
The name of the law school a candidate attended, even if it's a top-tier institution, is an insignificant factor in predicting their success in the legal profession. This finding challenges the long-held belief in the legal industry that the pedigree of a law school plays a significant role in an attorney's success.
Gladwell proposes a 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' rule for hiring to eliminate bias from the equation. This rule means employers cannot ask and prospective employees cannot disclose the name of the educational institutions they attended. The intention is to remove the concept of brand value from education and force employers to focus on the qualities and abilities of candidates rather than their educational pedigree.
The podcast concludes with Gladwell revealing that he and his assistant scored equally on the LSAT. This outcome, he suggests, indicates that experience and cognitive ability can balance each other out. In the end, however, it is argued that the LSAT score (and the name of the educational institution attended) is insignificant in predicting future success as a lawyer.