At the end of August, former Washington DC-based Chadbourne & Parke partner Kerrie Campbell filed a federal sex discrimination lawsuit against the firm on behalf of herself and the 26 other female partners employed by Chadbourne since 2013. The suit alleges that the firm routinely underpays its female partners in comparison to their male colleagues, and that it ‘actively retaliates against female attorneys who question the firm’s gender discrimination practices.’
Explosive allegations
Among the specifics of Ms Campbell’s claims are that she was personally underpaid while serving as a partner at the firm. Between 2014 and 2016, the lawsuit claims Ms Campbell was underpaid by around $2.7m relative to her male colleagues, despite personally generating around $5m in total collections for the firm during that time. The lawsuit accuses Chadbourne’s all-male, five-partner management committee of making decisions about the allocation of partnership points (and thus about remuneration) in a ‘black box’ away from scrutiny and free from accountability. ‘This wall of silence reinforces the Firm’s glass ceiling by shielding the Management Committee from meaningful oversight… and it also enables the Committee to routinely disfavour female partners…’ the suit claims.
Women partners speak out
Though Ms Campbell is the only named plaintiff in the lawsuit, the claim has been filed as a potential class action on behalf of 26 other women partners employed by Chadbourne since 2013. However, fourteen of those partners have now spoken out against the lawsuit in a letter penned to Ms Campbell’s attorney, David Sanford. The letter doesn’t specifically take aim at any of Ms Campbell’s allegations against the firm’s management – rather, it critiques her decision to act on their behalf by filing the claim.
Patronizing and patriarchal
‘Your complaint claims that it must speak for us because we are too afraid to speak for ourselves… To proceed in this manner, given your obvious awareness of the identity allegedly represented by the purported class action, is no less patronizing and patriarchal than what you accuse our male colleague of having done,’ it reads. The partners have also accused Ms Campbell of using the women in an ‘intentional and calculated manner’ in order to inflate the value of the lawsuit, attract press attention and push for a large settlement with the firm. All fourteen partners have demanded to be removed from the proposed class of Ms Campbell’s lawsuit.
Sources: Wall Street Journal; BigLaw Business
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