Above the Law reports that Baker McKenzie has eliminated 46 staff positions — all in the London office in professional and business roles — and another 33 jobs are still at risk as part of a firm-wide assessment.

The firm’s review covers 97 positions.

“Eighteen employees in those positions resigned, and 46 have been eliminated so far (15 were identified as redundant, while there remain 31 cut altogether),” writes Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino.

Read the Above the Law article.

The Energy Law Blog of Liskow & Lewis discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could have far-reaching implications concerning wage-and-hour laws for workers on oil and gas platforms located in open water on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Authors Jackie E. Hickman and Thomas J.McGoey II explain the background of the case:

“The plaintiffs in Parker Drilling Management Services, Ltd. v. Newton, were offshore rig workers who filed a class action asserting that their employer violated California’s minimum wage and overtime laws by failing to pay them for stand-by time while they were on the drilling platform. Both parties agreed that the platforms were governed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”), but they disagreed regarding whether the California’s wage-and-hour laws were incorporated into OCSLA and therefore applicable to workers on the platform.”

The Supreme Court found that federal law is exclusive and state law only applies where there “is a gap in federal law’s coverage.”

Read the article.

A former partner at Jones Day’s Silicon Valley office who accused the law firm of forcing her out after she raised concerns about its “boys’ club” culture has dropped her lawsuit in exchange for a return of capital she put into the firm, reports Bloomberg Law.

“Wendy Moore’s suit claimed the firm’s leadership retaliated against her after she voiced misgivings about its culture, pay transparency, and treatment of female attorneys,” writes Bloomberg’s Mike Leonard. “The complaint described Jones Day as a ‘fraternity’ where women are marginalized and objectified while male lawyers attend business meetings at strip clubs and sporting events.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

When drafting a China employment contract, one of the critical issues is always going to be the term of employment, points out Grace Yang, writing for Harris Bricken McVay Sliwoski’s China Law Blog.

She said the length of the employment term, especially the initial employment term, depends on the situation. But for new employees, her firm’s China employment lawyers usually recommend a three-year initial term, which usually works best when the employer wants that new employee to have a probation period.

“Because Chinese law requires that the probation period be proportional to the initial employment term, a three-year initial term means you can set the probation period for the maximum six months permitted by law,” she explains

Read the article.

An on-demand podcast episode of The Proskauer Brief discusses potential pitfalls that lurk in employment agreements and other employee compensation arrangements.

Speakers are Kate Napalkova, special employee benefits and executive compensation counsel, and associate Oleg Zakatov.

The podcast focuses on key contractual provisions that employers should incorporate into any document that includes a confidentiality covenant.

“Employers should be sure to tune in to see why involving your in-house team and outside executive compensation and employment counsel to regularly audit employment agreements, employee handbooks, independent confidentiality and IP assignment agreements, and other company policies is always a good idea,” according to an introduction to the podcast.

Listen to the podcast
or read a transcript.

Bloomberg Law reports that a federal judge has ruled that Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. may have discriminated against an in-house attorney who had portions of both legs amputated after developing vascular disease.

The case now will go to a jury trial.

Nationwide pointed to Kevin Greenwood’s documented performance problems, but there’s evidence a non-disabled attorney with similar performance deficiencies wasn’t discharged, the court said, and there’s also evidence the other attorney was given more than a year to do better while Greenwood only got a few months before and a few weeks after receiving accommodations to improve his performance.

Greenwood testified that a reason he was behind in one of Nationwide’s performance criteria was because it took him longer to get to and from court following his leg amputations, the court said.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will present a free webinar with Chicago Women in IP (ChiWIP), “Understanding Women’s Conflict in the Legal Workplace and the Bias That Built It,” featuring attorneys Andie Kramer and Alton Harris, with attorney Nikki Little as moderator.

The event will be on Thursday, June 13, 2019, at 10 am PDT / 11 am MDT / 12 noon CDT / 1 pm EDT. It also will be available as an on-demand webinar after presentation.

A common misconception is that women inherently have challenging relationships with other women at work, the firm said in a release. But the research of the speakers, Andrea Kramer and Alton Harris, has shown this is patently untrue. They will provide real-world advice and tactics for how both women and men in the legal profession can avoid workplace conflict and overcome deeply rooted biases in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

During this webinar, the presenters will share insights on the following:

• Gender bias in the workplace, including women’s same-gender conflicts
• How gendered workplaces disadvantage women
• How to build supportive work environments to help women succeed and advance

Register for the webinar.

A Jones Day white paper addresses the recent trend of California courts’ trend away from generally enforcing covenants restricting individuals from soliciting their former employer’s employees.

The paper also “provides an overview of a California Court of Appeals and two federal district court decisions that reflect this trend, and discusses the extent to which California employers can still rely upon such non-solicitation provisions. It also discusses other contexts in which non-solicitation provisions are under attack: from state and federal antitrust regulators and the plaintiffs’ bar.”

Read the article.

The 2019 In-House Counsel Compensation Report published by BarkerGilmore reveals that in-house counsel saw their income increase by an average of 4.4 percent.

The survey compares income from 2017 to 2018.

As in past years, women in-house counsel made less than their male counterparts — collecting just 85 percent as much on average.

Male general counsel in the study made an average of $630,000, compared to $537,000 for women GCs.

Download the report.

A new book by Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris takes a look at the notion about “mean girls,” “queen bees,” and women’s competitiveness with each other in office settings.

Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications interviews Kramer about “It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace: Women’s Conflict at Work and the Bias that Built It,” and the conclusion that there is no empirical evidence that women have more intense or frequent conflicts in working with other women than men do in working with other men or that women and men do in working together.

“The enduring notion that women are mean to—or hostile or antagonistic or competitive with—other women, can be explained, in part, by the fact that women often hold other women to higher interpersonal behavioral standards than men do,” Kramer, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery,  says in the interview.

Read the article.

JPMorgan Chase said on Thursday that it agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of male employees who contend they were denied access to the same paid parental leave as mothers between 2011 and 2017.

The Washington Post‘s Samantha Schmidt reports the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented named plaintiff Derek Rotondo, said “this marks the first settlement of its kind stemming from a class-action lawsuit on behalf of male employees claiming they were denied the same equal paid parental leave as women. The settlement comes amid growing pressure on employers to adopt gender-neutral paid-leave policies that encourage more equitable caregiving roles in the home.”

While not admitting liability, the company pledged to train those administering the policy and pay $5 million to male employees who claim they were denied additional paid parental leave as primary caregivers.

Read the Post article.

A few Biglaw firms raised starting salaries for first-year associates to $190,000 last June, but a study by the National Association for Law Placement reveals that most firms held to a more modest course on starting salaries in 2018.

Above the Law reports on the NALP study, which found that only 29.3 percent of reported first-year associate salaries hit the $190,000 mark. Smaller firms and firms with head counts between 501 and 700 didn’t budge and reported flat associate salary growth in 2018, writes Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino.

Most of the top first-year salaries were at firms in the major markets.

Read the Above the Law article.

Image by NY Photographic

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that the employer of a company was bound by an arbitration agreement with her employer even though she did not sign or return the agreement, according to a post on the website of Ballard Spahr.

The court found that the former employee was bound by language in the policy, which had put the plaintiff on notice:

If you do not opt out of this Policy within this 14-day period, both you and Compassus will be required to arbitrate all claims and disputes covered by this Policy in accordance with its terms.

Her acceptance of its terms could be inferred from her failure to opt-out within 14 days outlined in the policy and by her continued employment, the court ruled.

Read the article.

Bloomberg Law reports that two women among a group of female associates accusing Morrison & Foerster LLP of pregnancy discrimination must replead some or all of their claims, a federal judge ruled.

One of the plaintiffs was too late with her claims under federal and District of Columbia law, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said. And another plaintiff’s allegations were insufficient to support her argument that a release she signed was unduly influenced by the dire economic situation caused by her termination, the court said.

The women are part of a proposed nationwide class action filed in April 2018.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The former general counsel of ExlService Holdings says in a lawsuit that she suffered from gender stereotyping in her job, illustrated by an order from the CEO that she serve cake to the company’s junior male employees at a company anniversary.

The Washington Post reports on the complaint, which says the CEO at that anniversary event singled out then-GC Nancy Saltzman as one of the “ladies” in the room, despite the fact that she was the most senior female executive at the company. The complaint says Saltzman was humiliated.

The complaint says the event was an example of gender stereotyping. The Post‘s Deanna Paul writes: “According to the complaint, [the CEO] ‘took steps to exclude her from career and advancement opportunities, subjected her to enhanced scrutiny, and micromanaged her’ in a manner her male equals were not.”

She complained to other executives about stereotyping, but she later was fired.

Read the Washington Post article.

A small Labor Department agency with sizable oversight is looking closely at Big Law firms like Morgan Lewis & Bockius, Fox Rothschild, and Paul Hastings, as part of its mission to address compensation and promotion practices in the legal industry, reports Bloomberg Law.

“The DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs recently cautioned law firms that do work with the federal government that it will be closely analyzing how their employment practices affect diversity,” reports Bloomberg’s Paige Smith. “At least 10 firms will be audited by the OFCCP in 2019, and the agency’s director Craig Leen said investigators may target the legal industry in particular in future probes.”

Some big law firms are facing a wave of litigation over alleged discrimination against women and people of color.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The vice president of legal affairs & litigation counsel of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc. sued her employer, claiming executives shrugged off her complaints of sexual harassment as “a byproduct of being an attractive woman who works at a company with a French culture.”

The New York Post reports that plaintiff Andowah Newton claims her harasser — a “senior level management employee” whom she doesn’t name — frequently ogled her and once said, “You are so pretty. And that beautiful smile, I just can’t get enough of it.” He also made unwanted physical contact with her, she said.

The company’s response to her initial complaints is laughable, court documents say, because “none of the individual actors in this matter is, in fact, French.”

Read the New York Post article.

The 9th Circuit recently handed down an opinion that helps provide guidance to those employers trying to comply with collective bargaining agreements while simultaneously being challenged to apply potentially inconsistent definitions in California’s overtime law, writes Rebecca King for a Fisher & Phillips website post.

The case involved an offshore oil worker whose contract called for 12-hour shifts for a week and required him to be on the off platform between shifts. He wanted to be paid for the hours he was required to be on site.

Read the article.

Cleveland-based BigLaw firm Jones Day, which has struggled with its reputation in the past as a diverse and inclusive workplace, is being sued for gender, pregnancy and maternity discrimination to the tune of more than $200 million, reports Crain’s Cleveland Business.

“The firm’s admitted practice of pay confidentiality, combined with the “nearly absolute control” exercised by Jones Day’s Managing Partner Steve Brogan, has resulted in an opaque review system that allows bias and retaliation to run unchecked, Nilab Tolton, Andrea Mazingo, and four Jane Does say in their April 3 complaint,” writes Crain’s Jeremy Nobile.

“Jones Days’s fraternity culture presents female attorneys at Jones Day with an unpalatable choice: participate in a culture that is at best inhospitable to women and at worst openly misogynistic or forego any hope of success at the Firm,” the lawsuit states.

Read the Crain’s article.

NAVEX Global has published the 2019 Ethics & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report and made it available for downloading at no charge.

“One simple act of documenting open-door conversations and emails allows you to capture and address employee concerns more effectively,” the company says on its website.

The report includes statistics on:

• Case Closure Times
• Harassment Reporting Trends
• Anonymous Reporting Statistics
• % of Reports Substantiated

Download the report.