Biglaw

Biglaw Firm's Former DEI Leader Alleges Firing Over Clean Desk

If this is how she was allegedly treated, how is everyone else faring at the firm?

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947451Over the years, Above the Law has seen some very understandable distancing from former employees. Besides the expected layoffs, there are the occasional for-cause terminations that stem from things like BDSM contracts and work sex with junior associates or potty humor that summons the fire department and police to a tarmac. When these people got fired, no one (should) have been surprised. What’s very surprising is reading about why a former DEI leader at Armstrong Teasdale was fired from her job. Apparently, Sonji Young’s desk was too clean. From Law.com:

Young alleged that she was terminated from the firm at the beginning of 2023 after she offered recommendations on improvements the firm could make to its diversity efforts in preparation for an upcoming Mansfield Certification and subsequently had to take bereavement leave after losing a family member.

Young claimed that, at the meeting in which she was terminated, the firm’s chief human resources officer Julie Paul said, “[Young] had ‘signaled’ a resignation when she had tidied up her desk.”

Since when is being neat a reason to make someone hit the door? And even if Armstrong Teasdale wanted to spin this as a “Well, it looked like she was quiet quitting,” why would she do them the courtesy of cleaning up first? If you’re going to do the firm dirty before you leave them, leave a mess at least. Heads up, if you’re an Armstrong Teasdale employee and you want to take time off after a family member dies, make sure that your desk looks like a trash bin or you may get thrown into the trash heap.

Young has an alternative explanation: Racism. As it turns out, being the head of DEI at your firm gets you a buttload of intel on its internal workings. The things she reported going on at the firm look like a laundry list of red flags. According to her suit against the firm, some issues are personal:

“Armstrong Teasdale discriminated against Ms. Young through … subjecting her to differential and worse treatment, harassing her, subjecting her to a hostile working environment, refusing to communicate with her, refusing to grant her access to firm resources, refusing to allow her to participate meaningfully in decision-making, preventing her from performing her job, mocking and/or ridiculing her, discharging her from employment, spreading false information that she had resigned, delaying her unemployment benefits, failing to pay Ms. Young her paid time off, and making a FOIA request to her subsequent employer”….

Some issues are more systemic:

In her position overseeing the firm’s diversity efforts, Young claimed she heard from two associates in 2021 and another in 2022 that they were leaving the firm due to its “largely-white partnership” withholding assignments from associates of color; in April 2022, another associate reported to Young that she was opting to leave the firm following discriminatory behavior under the firm’s Denver office managing attorney Aubyn Krulish.

When Young reported the allegations against Krulish, “Mr. Rasche shrugged it off as nothing,” the complaint says.

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As alleged, deliberately withholding assignments from a class of associates based on skin color is kind of a big deal. If Young’s complaints got shirked, it isn’t surprising that associate requests for training were flipped as reasons to fire.

“The group [of practice leaders at the firm] told Ms. Young that the firm’s lowest performing attorneys were all people of color. Ms. Young told the group that these attorneys were reporting challenges in getting work assigned to them by their managing attorneys,” the complaint says. “Ms. Young asked what training these associates received to support their onboarding and development. Mr. Reh said ‘They don’t receive training.’ ‘It is expected that they know how to be attorneys when they graduate.’”

That response is a far cry from what the Professional Development Opportunities section of Armstrong Teasdale’s website offers. Allegedly not giving your minority associates work or training only to scold them for being low performing is a structural problem that grooms associates to fail. If you’d like to read an example of what it looks like when a firm actually lets a DEI chief do their job, read Yusuf Zakir’s detailed answers to the importance of diversity at Davis Wright Tremaine. It’s a stark difference.

Armstrong Teasdale Ex-DEI Leader Sues Firm Over Discrimination, Systematized Racism [Law.com]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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