Hokusai: The Great Wave off Kanagawa
The ABA Journal is reporting on the beginning of a trend of lawsuits by laid-off attorneys against their former employers. John Barber (Westminster BA ‘89, Loyola JD ‘92), a labor and employment lawyer at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, attributes the trend in part to low barriers to entry. He says, “lawyers are litigious by nature, so law firms should be particularly sensitive to protecting themselves when they lay people off.”
We would add two other catalysts. First, the horrendous employment market means that alternate opportunities are harder to find; if you’re not finding another job, you might as well sue to pay the mortgage. Three months’ severance only lasts so long. Second,the firms’ failure to hold up their end of the bargain isn’t buying them much goodwill any more.
Both of those also relate to an erosion in people’s mindset. The mentality used to be that suing a former employer was career suicide – but if there’s no backup plan, and the firms are already breaking their end of the bargain, that roadblock is gone.
The article identifies three cases, two of which (the third was some firm we’ve never heard of) are:
A suit by Henry Har, a former associate at Nixon Peabody, who claims the culture at the firm’s Los Angeles office was racist, sexist and homophobic.
A suit by Gary Green, a former associate at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, who claims he was fired for giving a negative review to a more junior associate that had partners fearing malpractice claims.
Perhaps the most-egregious behavior by a firm was when Paul Hastings fired Shinyung Oh, six days after she miscarried (she’s pregnant again, congratulations!). Best I can recall, she never sued, though.
Maybe we should add “something in the California water” to the list of catalysts. Har, as mentioned was in LA, so was Green (who was, of course, a labor & employment lawyer), and Shinyung was in San Francisco.
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