Friday, May 9, 2008

Law Firm Associate Burned

There are a lot of posts in the legal blogsphere about an associate (a junior attorney) with a big employment law firm who was apparently given a bogus-sounding bad performance review as part of an excuse to lay her off just six days after she had a miscarriage. Apparently the firm tried to buy her off with a non-disclosure agreement as part of her separation (for three months pay, maybe $50,000 according to some sources), and that she turned them down and then sent a pointed email to some in the firm complaining about how she was treated.

This email eventually found its way to someone who posted it online and thus much discussion has ensued. I won't rehash it all here, I'll just provide the links to the letter post itself and then to one blog posting about it where I have already left a few comments. The jist of my comments was that I thought that this associate was not burning bridges - the behavior on the part of the firm was just reprehensible and they should not expect some kind of generalized code of silence about former employers to protect them from this being made public. I don't think she should be penalized for this. She did not do anything wrong. The firm did. Penalizing her for not sitting there like a doormat and taking it is wrong. My comments at the blog go into some detail about that which I won't repeat here.

1 comment:

Larry Hamelin said...

She's going to be crucified. She's violated the golden rule: those who have the gold makes the rules.

I have, for another example, reliable reports of an employee who was reprimanded for taking her sick days immediately as they were accrued.