Roxanne Covington was recently sworn in as a judge in Philadelphia:

Roxanne E. Covington is making great strides in Philadelphia, Pa. as a newly elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas. She took the oath of office during a swearing-in ceremony in January. In her new capacity, Covington will serve as a judge in the Criminal Courts Division.

During the November 2009 election, Covington led a field of more than 20 candidates for a seat on the Court of Common Pleas. Covington is the only African American and African American female elected to the bench in Philadelphia during the 2009 election. She is also the youngest judge serving in the Philadelphia court system.

Full story here:

From The ABAJournal:

A former staff attorney of Covington & Burling can proceed with her federal discrimination claim over the law firm’s policy of assigning work, based on a disparate impact theory.

However, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton found that Yolanda Young had waited too long to bring a similar claim that the firm’s refusal to promote her to an associate position also was discriminatory, reports the Blog of Legal Times.

Walton OK’d the work-assignment claim because it involves a recurring issue that is revisited at annual reviews each year, the law blog explains. Young argues that the firm’s policies have a disparate impact because, she alleges, the staff attorney group is disproportionately black.

Says Yolanda Young’s attorney:

“My client is pleased to be able to pursue the disparate impact claim because it is not every day that a court allows that kind of claim to move forward,” attorney Latif Doman, who is representing Young, tells the BLT. “As we move forward with discovery, it will be clear that African-American staff attorneys are put through a similar system as white associates but are not being judged in the same manner.”

In March 2008, New York attorney, Caroline Memnon, filed a discrimination lawsuit against Clifford Chance and Sullivan & Worcester LLP. She sued Clifford Chance for blacklisting her after she agreed to leave in 2002 and failing to give her a contracted-for letter of recommendation. According to her complaint, Big Law refused to employ her for nearly six years despite graduating at the top of her class at Columbia Law School, working for two years in one of the largest corporate shops in the world, and speaking four languages. In the same suit, she sued S&W for acquiescing to Clifford Chance’s blacklisting by firing her after only six weeks of employment.  Like other discrimination victims, she and her claims were mocked in comments on Above The Law and The WSJ Blog, but she was not deterred.  Is it possible that she has now been vindicated––albeit, confidentially?

From Employment Law 360 (Subscription Required):

In a concise order filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Harold Baer asked the clerk to remove the case from the court’s docket, announcing that plaintiff Caroline Memnon and S&W had agreed to a dismissal of all claims.

Charges against Clifford Chance US LLP, the other named defendant in the suit, are also no longer pending.

While counsel—Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Proskauer Rose LLP and Doman Davis LLP represented S&W, Clifford Chance and Memnon respectively—remain mum, according to Law360, after the court rejected some of the law firms’ summary-judgment arguments, a settlement conference was scheduled for November 25th. Days after that conference and only three weeks before trial, Memnon voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit. Hmmm…wonder if she’ll be joining Colin Powell and Aaron Charney at 220 West 93.

Full disclosure:  Latif Doman is also representing OBABL founder, Yolanda Young, in her discrimination lawsuit against Covington & Burling LLP.  His firm has developed a niche practice of advising and representing attorneys on their rights with regard to employment at large law firms.

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.

If you believe that law firm hiring, retention and promotion practices should be closely examined, click here to help.

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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Today’s Legal Times updates readers on developments in Young v. Covington.  The piece opens with the most recent development in the case:

Latif Doman of Doman Davis, a small litigation and employment discrimination firm with offices in New York and Washington, will take the reins on the case, which has caused a stir in D.C. legal circles.

The article quotes me as saying that it was Mr. Doman’s passion for this issue that ultimately swayed me.  This is not entirely true.  While Mr. Doman, who is black, is passionate about the issues raised in my lawsuit, he also happens to be extremely smart and accomplished.  He has nearly fifteen years of litigation and employment law experience, which has included high profile cases like his representation of Genard Parker in his suit against the singer, Ashanti.  I confess to also being impressed with his legal bona fides–University of Pennsylvania Law School (ranked 7th by US News), Law Review, Federal Clerkship (Chief Judge John Garrett Penn), and BigLaw experience–that reassure those that need reassuring.

Mr. Doman’s accomplishments lend themselves to the assumption that he is a very good attorney and deserving of the legal community’s respect.  I, on the other hand, had marginal law school grades, difficulty passing the bar and legal experience limited primarily to document review.  The question the Legal Times’ article raises is this:  Are attorneys with less sterling credentials less deserving of training and a workplace free of discrimination?

As the article points out, my claims against Covington involve the segregation of minority attorneys and the use of racial slurs in the office. Covington admits that derogatory language was used in the office and  that staff attorneys are not provided the same benefits and training as other attorneys at the firm and are not included in many firm meetings and events.  They then try to make the issue about my grades rather than their firm practices.

From LegalTimes:

In the meantime, Covington seems to be settling on a hardball strategy for dealing with the suit. Last week it released a lengthy response to her complaint, in which it portrayed her as a dilletantish, marginally qualified attorney who never understood the nature of her job.

One of Young’s more incendiary accusations against Covington is that the firm used its staff attorney program to recruit minority lawyers, then systematically denied them the chance to rise into the associate ranks. She published a controversial essay on the topic for the Huffington Post titled “Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow.”

Covington’s response tries to hammer home the point that staff attorneys were generally less qualified lawyers whose only job was to handle electronic document review. It then proceeds to use Young herself as an example, using an Aug. 14 letter to the EEOC in which the firm first responded to her discrimination claims (pdf).

“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,” the letter states. “Ms. Young graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1995. Her average grade was only slightly better than a ‘C,’ well below the threshold level for a Covington associate. She did not pass the bar until 1998, three years after her law school graduation.”

What constitutes being qualified?  What’s the better indicator of the kind of lawyer I have the potential to be?  Grades or the fact that my writing has been endorsed by some of the world’s most  respected publishers:  Random House, USA Today, and The Washington Post?  Or perhaps it is the fact that I wrote a complaint that Covington was forced to answer.

OBABL has talked about the low bar passage rate for black attorneys, but we haven’t said much about law school grades.  GULC is a t-14 school that grades on the curve, so half of the class is always going to be in the bottom half.  Is it better to be in the bottom half of a t-14 school or closer to the top at a less expensive, lower ranked school?  If going to a top law school only benefits those at the top of the class, should law school promotional material alert students to this fact?

Meet Regina Mullen, who describes herself as a lawyer, mediator, doc reviewer, Japanese legal translator, inhaler of books, music lover and martial artist.  She’s been captivated by Yolanda Young’s  complaint against Covington & Burling LLP and has taken to the blogosphere.

She’s got the complaint parties’ Avvo Page ratings, links to articles about the case, and her very own analysis.  Here’s an excerpt OBABL found particularly interesting.  From ReginaMullen:

For those who want to complain about the money question, let’s just put it out there: there’s going to be a “check” written no matter what happens in this case. It’s NOT frivolous and the questions are 1) how much pain does the firm want to endure and 2) to whom do they want to write the “check”?

Of course, “uncomfortable,” is not a straight path to the “sackcloth and ashes” drill. Nobody buys that anymore, anyway.

What they have right now is the ability to control where that check gets spent. Once the case moves forward, they lose that control. It’s simply amazing what can be done with $10 million. So, pain management is certainly something to think about. Here’s a short list:

• The pain of billable time taken away from their clients.
• The pain of at least one client that is sure to look at them differently.
• The pain of having to pay a sibling firm to examine their dirty laundry.
• The pain of having to explain their diversity program’s success yet again at a time when they should be basking in the glory of having supplied the Obama ADministration with a stellar AG.

Covington will definitely want, in terms of crisis management, a few ideas about how to turn this thing to their advantage.

So, what I’d want to do is help the firm consider to what extent there might be truth to the allegations,–not just from a jury’s perspective, but from the perspective of the firm’s mission and goals in a post-Bush legal marketplace. Is there room in their thinking to consider this less “shakedown” and more “opportunity”?

We’ve received an enormous response to Young v. Covington. The issue that has drawn the most fire is that of the role of staff attorneys. Opinions seem to differ depending on one’s professional experience. Those who have worked for BigLaw seem to accept the way firms are structured without considering whether it’s sensible, fair or beneficial to clients. Those who’ve worked only in government or corporate American seem dumbfounded by the notion of a firm employing a large group of attorneys with no intent to train or promote them. Yesterday, The American Lawyer published, “The Staff Lawyer Conundrum: New Suit by Former Covington Lawyer Shows Complications of Associate Tiers,” which offered this take: 

The firm, [Covington’s GC, Jeffrey Huvelle] wrote, uses staff attorneys mostly for online document review, and makes no promises to promote them to associate and partner positions. They’re hired on an office-by-office basis distinct from the partner-track associate hiring process.

That sounded to us to be the deal most firms have with their staff lawyers. But Young’s complaint, which includes information on her salary and bonuses at Covington, suggests that not all staff attorneys have the same view of their role as the firms that employ them. As litigation departments face more pressure from clients to cut costs, we’re expecting staff (and contract) attorney ranks to swell. So at the very least, Young’s suit is a cautionary tale.

One of the reasons law firms are dying having to layoff so many attorneys is that they are very staid, “set in our ways” institutions. Firms are generally structured as follows:

Equity Partner
Non-Equity Partner
Associate – Counsel – Special Counsel
Staff Attorney
Litigation Specialist – Litigation Analyst – Legal Assistant
Paralegal
Secretary

As the AmLaw reporter suggests, many firms are resistant to promoting staff attorneys. The question then is why call them attorneys at all? Many litigation specialist and even some paralegals are lawyers; however, they understand that the firm is not holding them out as attorneys. To the contrary, firms do hold out staff attorneys as “attorneys” to their clients. Firms also sometimes promote staff attorneys to associate positions (though it is often done in an unorganized fashion).

Here’s a proposal. Why not design a program that annually promotes one or more staff attorneys to the rank of senior staff attorney. Then provide those promoted with training and legal research and writing assignments that could then be evaluated to determine if the senior staff attorney was ready to be elevated to a first year associate position. Such a program would lift morale and encourage better work product.

Thoughts?

Make no mistake about it, people.  THIS. IS. A. GREAT. COUNTRY!

For $120 you can pick up a stone and try to slay Goliath have your day in court.

Read Yolanda Young v. Covington here, but be patient; it’s long–37 pages for the actual complaint and 63 pages of corroborating emails, evaluations, etc.

Here’s an excerpt:

Plaintiff was hired by Covington in February 2005.  In January 2006, Plaintiff was awarded a top bonus of $9,000.  During her annual review she was told that her work was excellent, that associates and partners enjoyed working with her, and that her diligence and efficiency made her extremely valuable.  In March 2006, after being subjected to months of discriminatory and harassing treatment, plaintiff complained about, among other things, being referred to as a dog and later a monkey; being subjected to white staff attorneys’ constant use of racial slurs; having her white colleagues conceal case information from their black case team members; and being systematically discriminated against as a member of the staff attorney group.  Immediately thereafter, Covington management set out on a campaign to discredit Plaintiff.  At a staff meeting, a partner said that Plaintiff had overreacted in reporting the use of racial slurs.  As punishment, Plaintiff was reassigned to an office with no minorities.  Covington management further retaliated against Plaintiff by subjecting her to increased, unwarranted scrutiny, falsely accusing her of overbilling and commanding her to work off the clock. In February 2007, Plaintiff was given a low bonus of $5,000.  Plaintiff was told that she was being targeted for firing.  In fact, Plaintiff was terminated on August 14, 2007.  When Plaintiff learned that Covington rehired laid off staff attorneys with less seniority and lower billable hours than Plaintiff, she reapplied for her staff attorney position.  Covington did not rehire Plaintiff.  Subsequently, Plaintiff was contacted by a placement agency hired by Covington to recruit additional staff attorneys.  Covington still refuses to rehire Plaintiff. 

OBABL Q & A with Elie Mystal

A reader commented:

As a relatively new reader of ATL (obliged to keep a finger on the pulse of our industry), I already thought you must be an extraordinary person to endure and ignore the juvenilia that so often purports to be commentary on the ATL site. You’ve solidified my positive impression with your thoughtful answers here.

Obama Posse List

A reader commented:

You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted.

How Do I Recover From Failing My Bar Exam?

A reader commented:

I failed the NY bar and passed it on the second go round. I had a job (found out I flunked as a first year at a large law firm here in NY) and was even given a paid month off to study when I took it the second time. In some ways, this was even worse.

I ended up lateralling out of the firm because I feel like my failing the bar was “reason” for a lot of the people I worked with to assume I was stupid and treat me accordingly. Plus, it totally re-enforced point 1 (see infra).

When You’re “The Raisin In The Milk”

Truthtold commented:

I have two kids. One daughter who is in private school and a son to young for school.

The topic of public versus private school is one that grips the black intelligentsia in virtually every city where we exist in numbers(read: Atlanta, DC, NYC, Chicago.)

The issue is balancing diversity — making sure that there is a critical mass of middle class Black students versus quality of education.

Should Eric Holder Stand Up For Blacks At Covington?

One reader commented:

Every lawyer at a firm, particularly if you are African American, needs to have the mindset everyday, how can I knock it out the box? Is that a fair inquiry. Nope. But it’s a real one. If a partner won’t add talented associates/staff to his matters, his loss. Because someone probably will.

An opposing view:

I’m absolutely astounded by the responses to this post. As lawyers we are obligated to speak out and stand up for what’s right. Granted, many of us don’t because we’re too busy chasing the all-mighty dollar. But the reality is that we all have a responsibility to do what we are empowered to do in the face of injustice.

Yesterday was to end my three part series imploring black attorneys to stand up. I used Covington & Burling partner, Eric Holder, to highlight the lack of mentoring and support for some black attorneys. I referenced the legal blog, Above The Law, in an examination of the double standard with which black attorneys must contend. Finally, I explained my decision to file a formal complaint against my former firm, Covington & Burling. The interest in the series has been terrific and many of the responses have been illuminating. Thank you for contributing and please, keep the dialogue going. And speaking of comments, below I seek to dispel some myths and clear up some false assumptions put forth by readers.

Myth:  Staff Attorneys Are Never Promoted

I was surprised to see comments suggesting that being a staff attorney is always a dead end. Interestingly enough, just before Covington began hiring a large number of minorities as staff attorneys, two white staff attorneys were promoted. One became an associate despite the fact that he wasn’t on main journal at his law school (ranked 20^th by US News). The other, a special counsel, lists no journal or honors distinctions from his law school, which is ranked 100^th. So why is no one qualified for promotion now? What’s changed? It should also be noted that many large firms throughout DC do offer promotion opportunities to staff attorneys. Some firms even provide to staff attorneys offices within the firm’s main building.

Myth:   All BigLaw partners and associates have top grades and hail from top schools. Clearly they are brilliant because it takes a genius to handle complicated legal matters.

Perusing Covington’s attorney bio page, I’m just on the letter B when I score a white associate who lists no journal or honors distinctions. She and other white associates attended law schools ranked below 35. I don’t mean to pick on this particular woman, but I think it’s necessary to make the point. My sense from working as a “cog” at Covington was that yes, there is a wizard behind the curtain masterminding cases. Beyond those one or two people, the work is divided and distributed to any number of competent people who may have little or no knowledge of the case beyond their small portion. With a knowledgeable librarian to rely on as a resource and a modicum of partner oversight, most reasonably intelligent lawyers can handle their legal assignments. Partners recognize this. They wouldn’t occasionally hire the client’s dumb son if they thought he could really screw something up. And even if someone does, you simply write a brief explaining the situation to the court.

Myth: Black staff attorneys must not be qualified for other firm positions because law firms “bend over backwards” to hire black associates.

First, see above. It would seem to me that an organization bending over backwards would have in its midst some black associates and partners with the kind of lackluster credentials I pointed out above. Instead, they are to a one—TIGHT! Additionally, Covington has routinely hired black staff attorneys who attended top law schools. At one point, there was a black woman there who’d attended Yale Law School, which did away with grades a long time ago. It would seem to me that a firm that is busy turning over rocks would’ve considered those attorneys for some more challenging work.

Note: I don’t think one’s GPA or a person’s school rank is necessarily indicative of his/her intelligence. These are simply the rules that BigLaw has put forth. I’m merely pointing out the hypocrisy. Read more