Stuck

Leaving aside the admittedly crass "resource exploitation" phrasing, I think he was drawing a distinction between the incentives of the firm as an entity and its people. The firm has two primary goals: (1) to serve the client and (2) to make money for the partners. Institutionalizing a third goal to make associates better lawyers is difficult. The large law firm custom of replacing associates with (relatively) cheaper fresh graduates means that investing firm resources in training and development is inefficient. The best lawyers will rise to the top independent of training, and the remainder can be discarded.

I don't think people actually think this way though. You're right. The "cold, hard truth of capitalism" that people make a choice to make the bottom line net profit/loss isn't really a truth. While organizations can base decisions in terms of dollars and cents, people can't. Relationships invariably impact the decision-making process. It's how you get the senior associate who's willing to walk a new lawyer through the timeline of a transaction, even though that means she's working until 4 AM instead of 2. It's how you get the partner who works late alone on a Saturday night to avoid making his associates come in on a Sunday. And it might be how young lawyers can get value out of big law, even if the firm structure itself disincentivizes providing such value.

SanjayMurti