My original point is that if managers took recruiting more seriously and spent more time and money on finding the correct person they wouldn't need to ask for spec work.

My point in this rabbit hole is that doing "free aka spec" work for a lawyer vs designer/developer is completely different. With a lawyer you are talking about possible payouts that can equal to months, or even years of salary. For designers/developers the typical payout for spec work (for freelancers) are more like weeks.

Granted, this whole discussion around lawyers doing spec work vs designers/devs doing it is a bit convoluted. I shouldn't have used lawyer in the example, though I still don't think someone goes into a lawyers office and says "in order to work with me you must complete the following tasks". That's what happens to designers and developers, which I think it BS.