You're dead right: hiring is hard. Hiring with quality training, repeatable processes, feedback loops, etc. is incredibly hard. For most companies, whether they like to admit it or not, a B-grade process is "good enough". And the ROI to take it to A+ is either non-existent or hard to prove.
Here's the thing, though: that doesn't mean your labor attorney is wrong. One employee says something to a rejected candidate that could be interpreted as labor discrimination, and it doesn't matter how rigorous your process is, you're still in for the cost and time of a lawsuit to prove it.
How do you build the 0.1% risk of a company-ending lawsuit into your business case?
It is hard. The problem is that it's also hard to back out of a bad hire, so the cost of making a mistake is tremendously high.
I'm a very "right to work" (bullshit term I know) oriented person, in that I think neither companies nor their employees should be obligated to each other at all. Firing/quitting should be frictionless and easy. Instead, firing is wraught with legal problems such that you can't even fire an employee unless you can monetarily justify the cost of a lawsuit against their impact of being a negative influence, or they're part of some indiscriminate layoff procedure.
If I'm quitting or changing jobs, I'm harangued about it left and right by managers as to why or how this could happen.
Let's not pretend we owe each other anything and just move on like any other business transaction.
Here's the thing, though: that doesn't mean your labor attorney is wrong. One employee says something to a rejected candidate that could be interpreted as labor discrimination, and it doesn't matter how rigorous your process is, you're still in for the cost and time of a lawsuit to prove it.
How do you build the 0.1% risk of a company-ending lawsuit into your business case?