It has not been a week to remember for the venerable Houston law firm, Fulbright & Jaworski.
First, the firm’s expected public relations coup in hiring Harris County Judge Robert Eckels as a lobbyist with the firm was met with more than a little grumbling locally, forcing Eckels to address the question of why on earth he didn’t resign before last November’s election so that the voters could elect his successor? Eckels proceeded to sound oddly out of sorts in his subsequent public attempts to answer that quite reasonable question.
But that letdown was peanuts compared to the potential public relations disaster reported in this AboveTheLaw post:

Breaking: Fulbright & Jaworski Partner Drops the N-Bomb During A Recruiting Interview!
The email reprinted below, from Dean Katharine T. Bartlett, just went out to everyone at Duke Law School. It was forwarded to us by a source at the school.
Yes, we know: the partner who pulled a Michael Richards used “the n word” in the context of telling a story, in which the racial epithet was uttered by a character in the story. He didn’t use “the n word” to refer to any student or interviewee.
We don’t know the nature of the story being told by the partner. But unless the story was about, say, the partner’s pro bono representation, in a civil action for damages, of a hate crime or police brutality victim who was attacked and called “the n word,” it was hugely inappropriate for the partner to use a racial slur in this context (or, for that matter, any other context).

The post goes on to quote the Duke Law Dean’s entire email about the incident in its humiliating entirety, which is now all over the blogosphere. And the extensive comments to the post are interesting, to say the least.
But wait a minute. It turns out that there is more than a little context to the story. The above post was followed by this explanation from the Fulbright executive committee:

Dear Colleagues:
Because you may hear about or be asked about a recent situation at a law school where attorneys participated in training interviews of students, we want to bring it to your attention. One of our lawyers recounted a story about Leon Jaworskiís defense of an African-American man in a murder trial in Waco, Texas in the 1920s. During the retelling, in an effort to display the depth of racial hostility that Jaworski and his client faced, the attorney used a racial term that characterized what the district attorney in the case said about the defendant. After review of the situation, all involved concluded that such terms, although recounted without ill intentions, are inappropriate for our firm, which values diversity and strives for inclusiveness.
We are addressing the situation, and Steve Pfeiffer and other senior partners are en route to meet with the students. One of the other attorneys who participated in the training session acted immediately when the incident was called to his attention and responded with an electronic letter of explanation and appropriate apology. Any inquiries should be directed to the firm’s Hiring Partner, Gerry Lowry.
Executive Committee

And to make matters even more interesting, it appears that some members of the Duke Law School Faculty were stoking the fires. AboveTheLaw.com received the following email from a current law student at Duke:

This partner was relating what another person said in the context of telling a story. Now everyone is piling on him. The student [who voiced the complaint] has been goaded on by some super liberal professors.

H’mm. I wonder if any of those Duke law professors were the same ones who also supported the lynch mob in the Duke lacrosse team case?
My sense is that this all blows over quickly for Fulbright because, in the end, the Duke Law School Dean made a mountain out of molehill. But man, what a way to end a week that I’m sure the firm expected to be a public relations bonanza. Such is life in the big city.
Update: The Texas Lawyer ($) posted this online article on the incident today.