More Details From The Offensive Simpson Thacher 'Pregnant' Email

Wait, how has no one apologized yet?

Assuming you don’t have pregnancy brain, you remember the story of the Simpson Thacher associate who emailed an entire deal team calling out a Freshfields associate with “understand you are pregnant and may forget things from time to time.” It was a wildly inappropriate comment designed to undermine a woman in front of her professional colleagues and peers. Thankfully, Freshfields flagged it as such.

In our original story, it appears we got the timeline a little twisted. It turns out, the infamous “pregnant” email — which also included the comically threatening “hope you don’t let your pride get in the way of this deal” — was actually the last email in the chain.

A tipster with knowledge of the unredacted emails outlines the whole affair:

The three pictures are taken directly from the email chain, in reverse-chronological order, with sensitive information redacted and re-scanned into pictures. As you would see, the conversation starts with lousy performance of this [Simpson Associate] being identified by opposing counsel from Freshfields in order to expedite the closing process. [Simpson Associate] again to blasts out her random, last-minute one-line response to make a global change to a key document, which a good lawyer should have done seven days ago through a clear DOC file with track changes enabled. Then the Freshfields associate responded with “yes your majesty” with a sarcastic tone at 8:39pm on December 4. Apparently this [Simpson Associate] took it as a compliment and went “always happy to teach you more” at 8:54pm. Thereafter, there were some further exchange on legal terms, until this [Simpson Associate] completely lost it and lashed out at 9:23pm her discrimination against this pregnant Freshfields associate in a email chain with more than 50 people copied. The Freshfields partner’s email followed soon after. In short, the four screenshot of email lines in your article actually took place in the order of 2, 3, […] 1, 4.

So that’s how this episode of “When Transactional Attorneys Attack” went down.

The tipster, who is not from either Simpson nor Freshfields, informs us that they’ve not heard of any response out of Simpson other than to confirm receipt of the complaint from Freshfields. What?

This isn’t difficult. There should be an email sent to everyone on the distribution list apologizing wholeheartedly for the comment. Whether it comes from Simpson leadership, the Simpson partner on the deal, or the associate herself, someone needs to take responsibility for this and effusively fall on the sword. How has this not happened yet?

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Frankly, the fact that this wasn’t handled within 12 hours is almost more damning than the comment itself.


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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