Intelligence improves if the environment (the law department) encourages it

One of the bromides of management is to “hire people smarter than you.” This ambition may be easier than it seems if, as one researcher has claimed, IQ scores are generally rising. According to a review of James R. Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect, in the Am. Scholar, Vol. 76, Autumn 2007 at 133, Americans over the past few decades have become much more adept at reasoning beyond the concrete. Hence, IQ scores, which plumb abstract reasoning abilities, have risen.

Flynn claims that the direct effect of genes on a person’s IQ accounts for only 36 percent of IQ variance. The remainder results from the interaction of genes plus environmental differences. The implications of Flynn’s findings, if they turn out to be true, are enormous.

As to law departments, the conclusion would seem to be that the smarter the members of a law department the smarter the department becomes as a whole, since the environment encourages more mental acuity