We’re having a pretty gay Monday here at Above the Law. Earlier today, we discussed which top law firms won recognition from the Human Rights Campaign for being LGBT-friendly.

Perhaps we’ll still recovering from the weekend. As we mentioned before, we spent part of it attending the excellent Lavender Law conference, over in Brooklyn (just a short subway ride away from the ATL offices in Soho). In case you’re not familiar with the conference, here’s some background:

Every year, the sharpest legal minds in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community gather at the National LGBT Bar Association’s annual conference and career fair.

Hundreds of practicing attorneys, dozens of scholars, over 500 students and many leading members of the judiciary are expected to attend over the course of this year’s events.

We moderated a panel on Saturday, focused on federal courts and LGBT equality, and we attended several other panels and workshops. We’ll be writing a bit about the conference proceedings.

Our first conference write-up — discussing the workshop Coming Out in the Profession: “But What Will the Clients Think?”, which may interest young LGBT attorneys — appears after the jump.

Yolanda Young is back with a vengeance, and an amended complaint against Covington & Burling.

The brief synopsis on Young is that she was a Covington & Burling staff attorney who sued the firm for racial discrimination. Covington has denied the charges at every point. The firm briefly got the suit tossed, but it was reinstated.

Young’s basic allegations remain the same:

Through its pattern and practice, Defendant, Covington & Burling LLP, systematically relegates its black attorneys to its lowest rung of practicing attorneys — the position of staff attorney. Firm policy bans the promotion of staff attorneys to the position of associate and, ultimately, to partner. This prohibition adversely impacts Defendant’s black attorneys by consigning the majority to earning less money, performing less challenging work, and enjoying less opportunity for professional growth than Defendant’s nonblack attorneys.

This time around, Young argues that black staff attorneys at Covington are more qualified than their white colleagues:

Young points out that while Covington uses a combination of law school grades, journal membership, and clerkship experience to determine the assignment of its attorneys, many of their partners — who decide how an attorney should be assigned — lack such credentials, but presumably are able to perform adequately at partner-level.

Young also asserts that black practicing attorneys, as a group, typically graduated from higher ranked law schools than their white colleagues and that, more often than their white counterparts, black staff attorneys attended law schools from which Covington’s partners, counsel, and associates graduated.

I think I know what is going on here. See, this is a revenge fantasy lawsuit. And Covington has been typecast in the role of Major King Kong.

After the jump, Young brings charts to back up her claims, and announces her full intentions exclusively to Above the Law.

Last week, we brought you the story of a former Mayer Brown associate who is suing the firm. We have some more back story on the plaintiff, Venus Yvette Springs, and she certainly sounds like a colorful person.

Before joining Mayer Brown, Springs worked at Cadwalader. According to our tipsters, she left CWT in an interesting fashion:

In her departure email from Cadwalader, she quoted all sorts of religious passages and talked about how she wanted to devote her life to pro bono.

Shortly thereafter, she wound up at Mayer Brown — one of the largest and most profitable law firms on the planet.

In her complaint against Mayer Brown, Springs alleged that the firm did not count her pro bono hours as it had promised. Of course, working in the real estate department at a major firm hardly sounds like a life “devoted to pro bono.” She wants to work with clients who can’t pay, but wants to make sure she gets a plump pay check anyway.

But maybe she needed to support her family. Unconfirmed reports say that her husband is Jules Springs. Jules Springs recently pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud. No word on whether or not Mr. Springs was an equal opportunity defrauder.

After the jump, Venus Springs compares her plight at Mayer Brown to the Holocaust. I wish I were making that up.

A former Mayer Brown associate, Venus Yvette Springs, has filed a complaint against the firm. She alleges Mayer Brown discriminated against her and eventually fired her in 2008.

Springs was an associate in the real estate group of Mayer Brown, Charlotte. In her complaint, she claims that the head of the group, Frank Arado, said that he would make her a partner with the firm as recently as March 2008. But in May 2008, she was informed that she would be fired. She was officially terminated in September of 2008. The heart of her discrimination claim seems to be this paragraph:

In a statement obtained by Above the Law, Mayer Brown strenuously denied the claims:

Mayer Brown has not yet been served with the complaint filed by former employee Yvette Springs. However, based on our current review, we believe her claims have no merit. We will defend ourselves vigorously in this matter. Consistent with our policy of not commenting on personnel matters or pending litigation, we have nothing further to say.

Additional details after the jump.

Today, the Minority Law Journal published its new Diversity Rankings. There was a big change in the publication’s methodology, and that resulted in significant upheaval in the rankings:

All this churn comes courtesy of a new ranking formula adopted after we found ourselves wondering whether our traditional approach to measuring diversity—calculating the overall percentage of minorities within a firm—ignored something significant. Did it really make sense to treat all lawyers of color as essentially equivalent in stature? Should a firm get the same kind of credit for a minority associate as it does for a minority partner? We decided that it was time to start giving more credit to firms that have increased the racial diversity of their partnership ranks. Under our revised formula, we add each responding firm’s percentage of minority lawyers to its percentage of minority partners to come up with a diversity score. This number is a truer gauge, we believe, of what kind of progress a firm is making in hiring lawyers of color at every level, with an emphasis on those at the most senior levels. (Click here for a fuller explanation of our methodology, and a list of firms that did not respond.)

The change knocked Cleary Gottlieb off its long standing perch in the top spot. In its place, Wilson Sonsini claims number one status.

After the jump, additional details from well known firms.

Tulane Law School finished third in our post about the Top Law Schools of the Year.

Apparently, they took that as a challenge. Some of the law students there decided to throw a little party. From Guanabee:

It’s racist party pics of a bunch of white law students at Tulane University dressing up like Mexican caricatures. It seems last weekend the President of the Tulane Student Bar Association…. attended (or threw?) a party whose theme was “The Border” according to a tipster who attends the same school. These pictures were posted on [her] Facebook profile under the title, “No we will not die like dogs! We will fight like lions!” Because Mexicans are a caricature from The Three Amigos.

Geez guys, if you want to make ATL that badly, you could always just steal another shoe.

I guess some people are not clear on the rules, so let me help those people out. If you are already clear on the rules, please skip right to the jump, to see the blatant rule violations that were posted on Facebook.

Anyway, if you absolutely must dress up as a racial stereotype, you first need to ask yourself:

A) Are you a mascot?
B) Is it Halloween?

If you answer “no” to both questions, then you generally cannot mock other ethnic groups via costume, unless:

1) You’re “one-eighth” of the ethnic group you are mocking and can provide sufficient documentation to that effect upon request.
2) You’re in a play or some other performance piece and can legitimately blame directorial choices for your dress.
3) You’re trying to make a crushingly ironic point about the currently state of world affairs (a/k/a The New Yorker Exception).
But note that if you are applying under the guidelines set forth in subsection three, you can still legitimately be called out by others who aren’t in on the joke.

That is all. Pictures after the jump.

According to Connecticut DUI lawyer James O. Ruane, I can’t breathe as well as white people. Based on this “analysis” Ruane has determined that the breathalyzer is a racist device.

Really. I’m not making that up. Ruane represents a black man who got busted for drunk driving:

A breath analysis administered at state police Troop G in Bridgeport found Brown had a blood-alcohol content of 0.188. The legal limit is 0.08.

In a motion filed Tuesday in Superior Court, Ruane asked a judge to suppress his client’s breathalyzer test results, contending the device used by the state police, and most other local police departments, the Intoxilyzer 5000, discriminates against blacks. Brown is an African-American.

I’m all for zealous defense of your clients, but I don’t see why you have to insult thinking people of all colors to make that defense. But Ruane argued:

[T]he lung capacity of a black man is 3 percent smaller than a white man and, therefore, black men’s test results vary from the sobriety standard set by the device.

He said Dr. Michael Hlastala, a lung physiologist at the University of Washington, examined research of other lung physiologists and, based on his studies, has determined the Intoxilyzer 5000 does not effectively test the blood-alcohol content of black men.

“He looked at all the research and came up with the bigger picture and found the common thread,” he said.

Mmm … blanket generalizations about an entire people. I wonder what Michael Jordan’s lung capacity is as compared to Alan Dershowitz?

Ruane gets more crazy after the jump.

This news came in overnight. Via the AP (story filed at 2:33 AM Eastern time):

O.J. Simpson, who went from American sports idol to celebrity-in-exile after he was acquitted of murder in 1995, was found guilty Friday of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Simpson, 61, could spend the rest of his life in prison. Sentenc[ing] was set for Dec. 5….

The Hall of Fame football star was convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery and 10 other charges for gathering up five men a year ago and storming into a room at a hotel-casino, where the group seized several game balls, plaques and photos. Prosecutors said two of the men with him were armed; one of them said Simpson asked him to bring a gun.

Talk about timing:

The verdict came 13 years to the day after Simpson was cleared of murdering his ex-wife and a friend of hers in Los Angeles in one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century.

Karma is a bitch. We previously expressed pessimism about the prospects of a conviction, but we can’t say we’re unhappy to be proven wrong.

Update: (Mystal, J., concurring): I do think that the verdict was bull$#TTT because a white man who tried to get his own stuff back would never have been found guilty of a “crime” in a western state like Nevada. But I’m not going to lie (go to the 6:15 mark); the man killed two people back in the day.

I was happy that he got off back then, Fuhman was a racist cop, and I was happy that “society” learned that there is no justice when racist cops are involved. But I don’t suborn support killing people.

Acquittal via the race card, conviction via the race card … seems fair to me.

Simpson guilty on all charges in robbery trial [AP]
O. J. Simpson Found Guilty in Robbery Trial [New York Times]

Earlier: Do I Smell A Fuhrman?

If you want to change how law firms behave, you have to change what their clients want.

Some companies are trying to do just that. Du Pont, Shell, and Wal-Mart have teamed up to publish a list of law firms that are owned by women or minorities. The National Law Journal reports that this list is a just a directory of law firms that the companies themselves have used in the past. But the goal is clearly to push clients towards retaining law firms that place an emphasis on gender and racial diversity.

NLJ quotes DuPont’s general counsel, Tom Sager:

Judges, juries and public officials are becoming more diverse, so companies benefit from using firms that offer a diverse set of lawyers who can identify with these decision-makers.

Sound laudable? Or at least appropriately self-interested? Read about the counterargument after the jump.

Poor Clifford Chance. It seems they just keep on getting sued. First this. Now this, from the New York Sun:

A Haitian woman is suing one of the world’s largest law firms for $75 million, claiming that the firm used her only as window dressing because of her race, fired her for complaining about it, and finally blacklisted her in the New York law community.

Caroline Memnon, who is black, says in the lawsuit that despite her $125,000 salary as an associate at the New York office of London-based Clifford Chance LLP, she was never given any real work….

After firing her in 2002, Clifford Chance, known at the time as Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells, “surreptitiously ‘blackballed’ [her] within the community of New York law firms,” the suit says….

“We believe this claim to be without merit and will be contesting the case,” a Clifford Chance spokeswoman said.

Did Clifford Chance “blackball” her? Or did they just give her a less-than-stellar job reference, which employers are certainly entitled to do? [FN1]

Two other law firms, Chadbourne & Parke and Manatt Phelps & Phillips, both offered Ms. Memnon employment and then withdrew their offers, according to the lawsuit….

[Ms. Memnon] was hired by Sullivan & Worcester’s New York office and began working in February 2007. Sullivan & Worcester terminated her employment that March, though she billed 143 hours in her first three weeks there, which is above the firm’s expectation of 150 hours a month, the suit says.

The shortness of her stay at Sullivan makes one wonder if other issues are at work here. Could Caroline Memnon be another Charlene Morisseau — although probably less fabulous, since the divalicious Morisseau is in a class by herself?

[FN1] Does anyone else remember that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David “recommends” someone for a job with Richard Lewis? Larry intends to make the recommendation a tepid one — “recommend,” in scare-quotes — but Richard doesn’t pick up on that. Law firms may be more attentive to such nuances.

Woman Sues Law Firm Over Blacklisting [New York Sun]

Sorry we’re late to the party on this HuffPo post, bearing the provocative title “Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow.” It’s by Yolanda Young, a former staff attorney at Covington & Burling. Her claim, in a nutshell, is that Covington fills the ranks of its “staff attorney ghetto” with African-Americans, while the ranks of its partnership and partnership-track associate pool are overwhelmingly white.

Young’s post has already been discussed at Legal Blog Watch and the WSJ Law Blog. But considering how we love to fan flames of racial tension follow the issue of diversity in the legal profession so closely here at ATL, of course we’re going to cover it.

Here’s an excerpt (emphases added):

Blacks at Covington comprise less than 5% of the Washington office’s partners and associates, but make up 30% of its staff attorneys. A peek at the firm’s website doesn’t reveal this since, unlike all other lawyers there, staff attorneys aren’t pictured. Were they, a peculiar pattern would emerge…..

Covington’s black staff attorneys (like its black partners and associates) hail from top law schools like Harvard, Duke and Georgetown while several white associates and partners attended schools like Catholic, Kentucky and Villanova (all ranked well below 50). Taken as a whole, the black staff attorneys’ average law school rank is higher than that of white staff attorneys at the firm.

Blacks bought into the notion, stressed by legal literature, ranking systems and law firm recruiting departments, that investing in a top legal education is paramount for those wishing to work at top law firms. It’s disheartening to then discover that the black student who borrows $120,000 to attend Georgetown will only earn half that of the white associate who’s paid $60,000 to attend the University of Maryland.

Covington began stockpiling its staff attorney ghetto with blacks and other minorities in 2005, shortly after the General Council [sic] of some of the country’s largest companies joined Roderick A. Palmore, Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Sara Lee in taking a tougher stance on law firm diversity. Signed by hundreds of General Counsel, this new “Call to Action” states they will retain firms that demonstrate a level of diversity reflective of their employees and customers and end their relationship with firms “whose performance consistently evidences a lack of meaningful interest in being diverse.”

Covington has certainly diversified its firm; however, its attorneys are far from equals. The vast majority of Covington’s black attorneys do no substantive work, have no control over their case assignments and no opportunity for advancement. This seems to be just the sort of structure the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warned against in its 2003 “Diversity In Law Firms” report which stated, “In large, national law firms, the most pressing issues have probably shifted from hiring and initial access to problems concerning the terms and conditions of employment, especially promotion to partnership.”

You can read the rest of the post — it’s quite lengthy — over here.

What explains our delay? We were doing the MSM thing of waiting to hear back from Covington before posting (instead of just going ahead and writing about it, which would have been the more bloggy thing to do). They just got back to us, a few minutes ago; here is the first part of their statement:

We have long been committed to equal opportunity at all levels of hiring. Our ongoing efforts show positive results. In the case of our staff attorneys, we’ve been very successful in recruiting African-American lawyers. We attribute our success to a number of factors. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, which we will likely further enhance in the near future. This includes the innovative benefit of pay for pro bono work, and our staff attorneys average about 70 hours of pro bono work a year. Our staff attorneys are a stable, productive and respected part of our workforce. Part of this stability can be attributed to our recruitment process, which has benefited from the great number of referrals from our current staff attorneys.

The rest of the Covington statement appears after the jump.

In addition to reading Young’s post and the coverage of it, check out the material on the rest of her blog for background. Props to her for coming up with such headline gems as “Think of my mouth as your next sexual partner.”

P.S. Disclaimer: Please note that Kashmir Hill, former Covington & Burling paralegal, had no role in the writing of this post.

Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow [Huffington Post]
Georgetown Law Grad Says Big Law Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow [Legal Blog Watch]
Ex-Staff Attorney Takes Aim at BigLaw Minority Hiring [WSJ Law Blog]
Spade Project [video blog of Yolanda Young]