People love to complain that D.C. is a dysfunctional city. That may be a bit harsh. Despite the partisan gridlock, sometimes deals can be reached in Congress — for example, the new gun control compromise measure in the Senate.
And the city itself is a much more appealing city to live in these days. The recent, taxpayer-financed boom in D.C. has led to improved restaurants, nightlife, shopping, and residential options. (I used to live in D.C., from 2006 to 2008, and I continue to visit frequently.)
But the lawsuits coming out of the nation’s capital — well, they’re still pretty crazy. Time for some quick updates on the insanity….
Take this famous line and replace “man” with “law firm partner,” and you’ve captured the gist of the lawsuit against Ropes & Gray brought by Patricia Martone, who alleges age and sex discrimination by her former firm. (Martone, a former IP litigation partner at Ropes, is now a Morrison & Foerster partner.)
When I broke the news of this lawsuit back in 2011, I expected a speedy settlement. Would Ropes really want to go toe to toe with a pair of high-powered litigatrices, namely, Martone and her formidable employment lawyer, Anne Vladeck?
But here we are, two years later, and the battle rages on. Ropes has hired a third leading litigatrix to defend itself. Let’s learn the latest news….
(Note the multiple UPDATES at the end of this post.)
You know what’s the mark of a good lawsuit against a law firm? The ability to polarize. Sure, it’s fun to laugh at the wacky ones, like Berry v. Kasowitz Benson or Morisseau v. DLA Piper. But the true classics are cases in which half the people think the plaintiff is a crusader for justice, and half the people think the plaintiff is an extortionist.
Take the 2007 lawsuit of Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell, brought by a young M&A lawyer claiming anti-gay discrimination. That was a great lawsuit. Some readers saw it as a Philadelphia for the 21st century, while others saw it as a shameless shakedown of a top law firm.
By this standard, Levinson v. WilmerHale is a good lawsuit. Readers can’t seem to agree on this one. Let’s check out the sharply divided opinions — and also hear more about Pamela Levinson, from former colleagues at the firm….
Today brings news of another employment discrimination lawsuit filed against another top law firm. It’s being filed by the litigation boutique of Sanford Heisler LLP, which seems to be carving out a nice little niche in plaintiff-side Biglaw employment litigation.
Which firm is being sued this time, and what are the plaintiff’s allegations?
We offer a lot of coverage of lawyers suing their law firms. They’re almost always the same: lawyer is fired; lawyer finds something to sue the employer over. Sometimes the lawyer’s claims have merit; sometimes they don’t.
It’s a little more rare for a law professor to sue his or her law school. That’s probably because it’s much harder for a law professor to be fired or pushed out. Oftentimes you only see lawsuits from professors when they feel like they’ve been unfairly denied tenure. After they get tenure, well, there’s little the law school can do to them anyway.
Well, unless the school concludes that a professor “poses a safety risk,” to the students at the law school. Then, the professor can be suspended.
And then, much like a lawyer in private practice, the law professor will sue the school….
How you come down on a case of alleged “age discrimination” probably depends on whether you view the issue as age discrimination in the first place, or if you see it more like trying to pry control of the country from the cold dead hands of the Baby Boomers.
This issue came to a head on Capitol Hill yesterday when Luke Russert “irritated” Nancy Pelosi by asking if her decision to stay on as Minority Leader “prohibits the party from having a younger leadership.” Pelosi snapped at him as if the question was inappropriate and ageist. And it probably was. But at the same time, the three top ranking House Democrats are 72, 73, and 72… which is freaking ancient. And their presence is clearly choking off opportunities for younger people with newer ideas.
The issue is also coming up in Pennsylvania where six old-ass judges are suing to overturn a state law that requires them to retire by the age of 70….
* Gloria Allred’s “October Surprise” for Mitt Romney didn’t exactly go according to plan, but that’s probably because she never filed the appropriate motions related to the gag order in this decades old divorce case wherein Mitt Romney testified. [Bloomberg]
* This Election Day, 16 Biglaw firms in offices across the country will be manning an Election Protection hotline to field questions, because despite the bad jokes about the legal profession, “lawyers can play a really valuable civic role.” [Am Law Daily]
* “We never make decisions to eliminate positions with any discriminatory conduct.” In other news from the CYA Department, Paul Hastings really doesn’t like getting sued by former legal secretaries who were laid off by the firm. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* The assistant dean of academic support at TSU’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law claims the school discriminated against her based on her skin color. Did we mention she’s white? [Courthouse News Service]
* Apparently the allegations of false reporting levied against TJSL are a “crock of crap” because the school claims the ex-employee who told on them never alerted the dean. Hmm… [Thomas Jefferson School of Law]
* A nice pipe dream: now that “the twilight of the generalist law degree is here,” perhaps law schools will move to a two-year model, with an optional third year for specialization purposes. [DealBook / New York Times]
Whether you like it or not, people are going to go back and forth on grade inflation until the end of time. Some think it’s God’s gift to gunners, and some don’t. But if you’ve decided to embark upon your legal career later in life, it may seem like there’s no way to compete with millennials whose college report cards are so littered with inflated grades that they might as well be printed in glitter and accompanied by gold stars.
And that is exactly what one certified public accountant alleges in a lawsuit that he’s filed himself against Baylor Law School — the same school that accidentally released its incoming students’ GPAs and LSAT scores, as you may recall….
* Dewey get to see a member of this firm’s chairman’s office strut for a perp walk in the near future? After all, partners reportedly say that it’s thanks to him that D&L may close up shop “as early as next week.” [Law360 (sub. req.)]
* De-equitize this: Oh, how Biglaw firms in America wish that they could return to merry old England, where mandatory retirement policies for old fart partners are the norm, and the courts agree. [Legal Week]
* “We’re about to beat a dead horse here.” Even the judge presiding over the John Edwards trial got pissed when the defense repeatedly asked variations of the same question on cross-examination. [MSNBC]
* Ain’t no shame in his game (well, actually, there is). Judge Wade McCree’s lawyer says he’s sure the judge is sorry for his sext messaging. Yeah, sorry he got caught. [Detroit Free Press]
* Is this the first test of the “ministerial exception” in the Perich case? A teacher at a Catholic school was fired for getting in vitro fertilization treatments, and now she’s suing. [CNN]
* Insert your own UVA joke here, bro. Yeardley Love’s family has filed a $30M wrongful death suit against former college lacrosse player, George Huguely V. [Washington Examiner]
* Well, at least somebody’s getting a spring bonus. A Biglaw firm has folded against the EEOC’s will on the de-equitization of partners. And all of the underpaid old farts at Kelley Drye & Warren rejoiced! [Bloomberg]
* Jets fans, are you ready for some football? That’s too bad, because no amount of Tebowing could have saved Reebok from settling this Nike suit. You’re going to have to wait for your damn jerseys. [WSJ Law Blog]
* George Zimmerman’s lawyers, Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig, have dumped him as a client. They’re probably just pissed that the “defense fund” he set up wasn’t linked to their PayPal account. [Miami Herald]
* Marrying a terminally ill client who’s as old as dirt may seem like a great way to make some quick cash, but it’s more likely that you’ll just be disbarred. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* When you’ve been late to court so many times that a judge calls your behavior “premeditated, blatant and willful,” you better be ready to open your wallet. That’ll be $500; at least pay on time. [New York Law Journal]
* If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — but only after a few years, banking on the off chance that the bar admissions people have forgotten about all the bad sh*t you did in law school. [National Law Journal]
* Frank Strickler, Watergate defense lawyer to two of President Nixon’s top aides, RIP. [New York Times]
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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