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Sometimes, staffing at biglaw has no relationship to one’s competence. I myself have been pushed out of the work of a client that i built from next to nothing to a major client for the simple reason that i have an accent and not as a smooth a talker as a couple of white guys one of whom i would not trust any legal work because he is just incompetent. I recall being asked to write an appeal brief for the USPTO on a complicated case because of my superior skills and the importance of the case (this was a patent case) only for the partner to ask one of the white guys to argue— a competent guy but one they couldn’t trust to write the brief. The oral argument lasted no more than handful of minutes because the administrative judges have already made up their minds and asked him if he has anything outside of the brief that he wants to add. When he fumbled around a little because of the disruption (as anybody would’ve), they ended the hearing and reversed the examiner’s decision based entirely on my arguments. Guess what the client was told? The white super star won it all and no one at the firm bothered to correct the record. That is your big-law. That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with that firm. It was in 2020. I looked for a job for over two years and then decided i have had it with them and quit without a job. So, i will never assume that she wasn’t competent.
NEP1–I’ve seen similar patterns.
One issue is a bias against having POC and/or women in the courtroom. Partners have even indicated they don’t want to put a diverse attorney in front of the judge because they think the judge is biased. This argument essentially excuses the partner’s own biases and stereotypes—that POC will appear as “outsiders,” women will seem “less confident” or “too aggressive,” etc.
Why are you assuming that she was staffed for diversity reasons? Could she have been the best in her field? Your assumption is part of the tragedy. That uphill battle where you never get the benefit of the doubt is part of this tragedy. I have been in places where i knew (and every there knew) that i was the best in what I was discussed. Yet, people would defer to some other guy just because he is white. I can list dozens of times in my career that people made assumptions about me that they would never make had i been a white dude. Please do not assume she got anything because she is poc. Before i assume that she had gotten anything in law practice because of the color of her skin, i would be more comfortable assuming that more than half of the white men you see in high places have no business being there except for being a white man.
Apparently she was unable to find a new biglaw job so she wasn’t staffed on anything in the last two years.
Big clients, like those that would have antitrust matters, often ask that their matters are staffed with diverse talent.
I didn’t know her but I see that she was a big law antitrust lawyer in DC and involved in the ABA antitrust section. The firm’s clients would have been big companies that are incentivized to staff matters with diverse talent, and there are very few young women of color in the field. I’d like to know more about what happened at Winston & Strawn in NYC when she was there from 2016-2021 was it a partner that discriminated against her who was sleeping with another partner? It sounds like she made a claim and took a settlement Id like to know more about what happened.
As for her tragic ending, I don’t think we can say that she wanted to work, no one “took a chance” on her and she became hopeless. That might have been it but no one can know. Just goes to say that mental health is a precious thing and we need to support ourselves and each other, check in on each other, and ask for help when it’s needed.