Automated Employment Decision Tool, Candidate Notice

1. What this notice is

If you are applying for a job located in New York City, or you live in New York City and are being evaluated for a job, BigLaw Bear and the firm reviewing your application may use an automated employment decision tool (“AEDT”) to help screen your application. New York City law requires us to notify you at least 10 business days before that tool is used, describe what it does, and explain your rights.

2. What the tool does

The pre-screen tool reviews the materials you submit with your application (cover letter, custom-question responses, personal statement, and basic profile data). It scores each application against a rubric the firm publishes covering academics, writing quality, fit, experience, and trajectory. The score and the supporting rationale are surfaced to a human reviewer at the firm; the AEDT does not make a final hiring decision on its own.

[REPLACE WITH LEGAL-APPROVED COPY: detailed description of the job qualifications and characteristics that the AEDT will use to assess the candidate, per § 20-871(b)(1).]

3. Data type and source

The tool uses only the materials you provide as part of your application to BigLaw Bear and the application questions requested by the firm. It does not pull data from outside sources, social media, or third-party background databases.

[REPLACE WITH LEGAL-APPROVED COPY: the type of data collected for the AEDT, the source of such data, and the firm’s data retention policy, per § 20-871(b)(2).]

4. Bias audit + four-fifths math

Local Law 144 requires firms using an AEDT to commission an annual independent bias audit. The audit must publish, per demographic category, the rate at which candidates were selected and the “impact ratio” against the highest-rate category. The EEOC’s Uniform Guidelines consider an impact ratio below 0.80(the “four-fifths rule”) a flag worth investigating.

Below is an illustrativefour-fifths table showing how each firm’s annual audit is structured. The numbers are synthetic and for explanation only. Production firms publish their own audits via the link in the box above (when present) or by request to legal@biglawbear.com.

How the math works. Selection rate = selected / considered for that category. Impact ratio = category rate / max(rate among included categories). Categories representing fewer than 2% of the total considered population are excluded from the comparison per DCWP rule 5-301(a)(8) and disclosed separately. An impact ratio under 0.80 is the “four-fifths” flag from the EEOC Uniform Guidelines and prompts the auditor to investigate the cause and recommend remediation.

Race / ethnicity (EEO-1 categories) and the intersectional race × sex breakdown follow the same structure and live in each firm’s full audit report. We do not aggregate that across firms because each firm’s candidate pool, rubric, and screen are different, comparison only makes sense within a single firm’s annual cohort.

5. Your right to opt out

You have the right to request that your application be reviewed without use of the AEDT. To opt out, reply to the email containing this notice with the words “OPT OUT OF AEDT” or email legal@biglawbear.com. Opting out will not penalize your application; the firm will review it through its standard manual process.

[REPLACE WITH LEGAL-APPROVED COPY: instructions for requesting an alternative selection process or a reasonable accommodation, per § 20-871(b)(3). Confirm the firm’s preferred opt-out channel and the timeline within which the firm commits to honoring opt-outs.]

6. How the tool works

For a plain-English description of every AI feature on Big Law Bear, the data inputs, the bias monitoring we run, and the human review every output passes through, see /legal/ai-methodology.

7. Questions

Email legal@biglawbear.com or write to BigLaw Bear at the physical mailing address on the firm’s outreach footer.