Biglaw

Winston & Strawn Is The Latest Biglaw Firm To Face A Gender Discrimination Lawsuit By A Former Partner

The former partner alleges she was as treated as "an appendage of a male superior."

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Constance Ramos

Steptoe & Johnson LLP, Chadbourne & Parke, Proskauer Rose, LeClairRyan, Sedgwick and now Winston & Strawn. All Biglaw firms that have be accused by former attorneys of gender discrimination.

The most recent case was brought by Constance Ramos against her former firm and filed last month in San Francisco County Superior Court. As reported by Law.com, the complaint alleges Ramos was never treated as a lawyer and partner in her own right, but as “an appendage of a male superior” that the firm sought to be rid of when the equity partners that Ramos joined the firm with ultimately left Winston.

Ramos joined Winston as part of a group of lateral IP partners that moved from Hogan Lovells, but she alleges when the other two partners she lateraled with — Korula “Sunny” Cherian and R. Scott Wales, who joined as equity partners while Ramos was an “income partner” — left the firm, she was robbed of opportunities to develop her business, had her salary slashed,  bonuses denied, and was ultimately forced out:

“I did not expect that a law partnership with Winston’s reputation would engage in discriminatory practices … I am especially devastated by the increasingly hostile work environment that this firm created in its bias against me, namely, the notion that my capabilities and worthiness as a lawyer depend solely upon whether certain male equity partners remain at Winston,” Ramos wrote in an excerpt from the letter included in her complaint. “When I came to Winston, I expected to be evaluated on my own merits, assessed by my own accomplishments, and treated as an individual, not as an appendage of a male superior.”

The complaint indicates she was directed to stop working on client matters in January 2015, and asked to find new employment. Additionally, despite billing 2,250 hours on the primarily piece of litigation she arrived at the firm with, she did not receive any bonus. Instead of finding a new job, Ramos claims she hoped to maintain her career at Winston:

During the next month, Ramos engaged in a variety of conversations—via email, interoffice mail, letters and the phone—with [Thomas Fitzgerald, chairman of Winston & Strawn’s executive committee] in which she stated that she was committed to building a career at Winston & Strawn and had no desire to leave the firm. Ramos’ complaint accuses Fitzgerald of belittling her and threatening to reduce her annual compensation if she “refused to obey his demand and withdraw from the firm.”

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According to her complaint, Ramos repeatedly got the runaround on which matrices her compensation would be based on. She alleges that despite being told that income partners would be primarily paid on hours worked and despite exceeding the billable hour threshold threshold at which bonuses usually attach, in April 2016 her compensation actually declined 33 percent from $450,000 to $300,000.

At this point, Ramos maintains she redoubled her efforts to be integrated as a member of the firm, all to no avail:

But Ramos alleges that was left out of pitch meetings and excluded from other cases in favor of less qualified male lawyers, according to her complaint, which notes that on one matter where Ramos was allowed to participate, she was denied an origination credit in favor of a male colleague. Efforts to expand her practice into transactional work met similar internal business development obstacles.

In April 2017 Ramos again saw her compensation slashed, this time to $200,000. A few months later, she determined she could no longer continue to work at the firm. She filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and received a “right to sue” letter. She filed the complaint August 30th.

We know Ramos isn’t the first woman partner to take on Biglaw alleging gender discrimination. Smart money says she won’t be the last.

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Read the full complaint on the next page.

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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