Yolanda Young has amended her complaint against her former law firm, Covington & Burling LLP to include a disparate claim.

YoungvCovington-amended-complaint:

Through its pattern and practice, Defendant, Covington & Burling LLP, systematically relegates its black attorneys to its lowest rung of practicing attorneys––the position of staff attorney. Firm policy bans the promotion of staff attorneys to the position of associate and, ultimately, to partner. This prohibition adversely impacts Defendant’s black attorneys by consigning their majority to earning less money, performing less challenging work, and enjoying less opportunity for professional growth than Defendant’s nonblack attorneys.

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In the complaint Young uses data gathered from Covington’s website, the National Association of Law Placement (“NALP”), and U.S. News & World Report to demonstrate that one in two black attorneys at Covington is a staff attorney while only one in fifteen white attorneys is, making a black attorney 7.5 times more likely than a white attorney to be assigned to a staff attorney position.

YoungvCovington-AttorneyCharts.

Additionally, Young points out that while Covington uses a combination of law school grades, journal membership, and clerkship experience to determine the assignment of its attorneys, many of their partners––who decide how an attorney should be assigned––lack such credentials, but presumably are able to perform adequately at partner-level.

Young also asserts that black practicing attorneys, as a group, typically graduated from higher ranked law schools than their white colleagues and that black staff attorneys more often than their white counterparts attended law schools from which Covington’s partners, counsel, and associates graduated.

“The auto, banking and retail industries have dramatically improved their diversity after being brought to task by the public through campaigns such as the Rainbow/Push Wall Street Project and the Tom Joyner Radio CompUSA crusade. Large law firms, however, who generate their revenue from publicly traded companies that have made a diversity turnaround, have not addressed their own lack of diversity––despite having an ethical obligation to do so,” said Young’s attorney Latif Doman, Esq. of Doman Davis.

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