Judge Takes Pity on Lawyer Suing Covington

Yolanda Young’s discrimination suit against Covington & Burling has been given a second chance.

Her suit was dismissed last month, but the judge cut her a huge break.

According to the National Law Journal, she and her lawyer, Latif Doman of Doman Davis, missed the first status conference on the case, as a result of which, Judge Reggie Walton of the DC DC dismissed her claims.

She pled for mercy, and got it.

Young asked the judge to reconsider, saying that Doman had simply written down the wrong time for the conference on his calendar. She pointed out that although the judge had dismissed the case without prejudice, more than 90 days had passed since she received a right-to-sue notice from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Therefore, she would not be able to file another claim under Title VII or the D.C. Human Rights Act. That was far too harsh a penalty for a small oversight, Young contended.

If signing a contract in the wrong place on purpose can work, writing down the wrong time seems equally plausible.

Young, you’ll recall, is the staff lawyer who thought she was an associate. Covington’s reply brief should have disabused her of that notion.

Ms. Young is an African-American whose publicly-stated career interests focus on the media; she has published a book, appeared as a “talking head” on TV and written commentary for newspapers and blogs. Ms. Young graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1995. Her grade average was only slightly better than a “C,” well below the threshold for a Covington associate. She did not pass the bar until 1998, three years after law school graduation. When she applied to Covington for a staff attorney position, her work experience as a lawyer consisted of a series of short-term jobs with temporary staffing agencies reviewing documents as a contract attorney. She has never worked at any firm as an associated and never engaged in the regular practice of law – i.e., she has not represented clients with respect to legal matters.

That “commentary for … blogs” can be pure gold. In her most-famous screed, she equated discrimination in staff-attorney programs to “Jim Crow” laws.

Covington began stockpiling its staff attorney ghetto with blacks and other minorities in 2005, shortly after the General Counsel of some of the country’s largest companies joined Roderick A. Palmore, Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Sara Lee in taking a tougher stance on law firm diversity. Signed by hundreds of General Counsel, this new “Call to Action” states they will retain firms that demonstrate a level of diversity reflective of their employees and customers and end their relationship with firms “whose performance consistently evidences a lack of meaningful interest in being diverse.”

Covington has certainly diversified its firm; however, its attorneys are far from equals. The vast majority of Covington’s black attorneys do no substantive work, have no control over their case assignments and no opportunity for advancement. This seems to be just the sort of structure the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warned against in its 2003 “Diversity In Law Firms” report which stated, “In large, national law firms, the most pressing issues have probably shifted from hiring and initial access to problems concerning the terms and conditions of employment, especially promotion to partnership.”

She blogs on race issues and law practice at On Being a Black Lawyer.

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