May 2008 is almost over, and it's a month that Bingham McCutchen will probably be happy to put in the past. The month kicked off with Roofiegate. Then came this benchslap, reported by Legal Pad (in a post titled "Bingham Busted By Its Own Website"):
Almost every big law firm uses its website to tout its commitment to diversity and its global reach. For Bingham McCutchen, it may have cost the firm a bid for sanctions.A Bingham employment law team including partner Wendy Lazerson and associates Jacqueline Bronson and Kristen Pezone was set to take a deposition in the wrongful termination case of Kim v. Poonsang Microtec Corp. on April 17. The day before the deposition, plaintiff's attorney Frank Mayo of Los Altos served additional discovery, including some documents that were in Korean.
Bingham's team insisted on postponing the deposition, saying they could not get the Korean documents translated in time. Mayo objected, saying his client had already flown up from Southern California. Things turned nasty and both sides moved for sanctions.
In a tentative order filed Thursday (see Page 31 of this pdf) , Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Socrates "Pete" Manoukian rejected both sides' request for sanctions.
"This court finds it difficult to believe that no one in the office of [Bingham] is able to speak Korean, given that the Bingham web[site] has many referrals to its commitment to diversity and its ability to service, among others, Korean clients," Manoukian wrote. [See, e.g., here (PDF).]
Ouch. As our tipster snarkily observed, "Live by the sword, die by the sword. For a firm that runs as much as this one does on pure PR, this is quite fitting."
Funny -- but fair? We contacted Bingham -- which we're not sure Legal Pad did, despite being an MSM blog -- and received this statement, from firm spokesperson Claire Papanastasiou:
To use this tentative ruling to question Bingham's commitment to diversity is misleading and false. Bingham has continuously been recognized as a leader in championing diversity in the workforce. More than 440 people at Bingham speak 51 foreign languages (including Korean), but this was not a simple matter of getting documents translated. This case involved the authentication of documents -- which would have required a court-certified translator -- and with a 16-hour time difference, the Bingham legal team wanted to confer with the client, who was in Korea, to determine the documents' authenticity and discuss next steps. Bingham informed opposing counsel of the decision not to go forward as a courtesy. And finally, Bingham offered to take the deposition in Orange County and ended up with an order that simply provides what our lawyers were already willing to do. Efforts to transform this relatively minor discovery dispute into something more profound simply are unjustified.
Interesting. As noted by a Legal Pad commenter, the ruling "[s]eems more like a political dig against diversity efforts by Judge Manoukian."
Speaking of diversity, Bingham has been honored as one of the best law firms for gays and lesbians, by Human Rights Campaign (Aaron Charney, holla); for Asian American lawyers, by Multicultural Law (Shinyung Oh, holla); and women, by Working Mother (pre-Roofiegate).
Alas, even if Korean Translation-gate was overblown, it wasn't the end of Bingham's unflattering media mentions in the month of May. Check out this National Law Journal article, which depicts Bingham as hemorrhaging talent and "troubled."
Was this piece evenhanded journalism? Bingham thinks not. They've issued a lengthy and detailed response, blasting reporter Sheri Qualters's article as "outrageous," "poorly reported," and "factually inaccurate by any objective measure."
It's kinda delicious. Read the whole thing, after the jump.