New York Lawyer
April 6, 2006

Q:
I do appreciate your reply to last week's question. A few years ago, I worked as a junior associate in a top 10 NYC law firm. During my first year, I worked with the partner who recruited me on interesting deals and clients. In my second year, another partner who was higher up in the practice group hierarchy declared that I had to branch out and work with him.

I spent my second year working for him. During that time, he got increasingly flirtatious and innuendos abounded. I was single but he was married with children. As he was a charming person, I did enjoy the seemingly harmless banter at first but always made it clear that things would not go any further. I happened to not enjoy the specific practice this partner was involved in. A colleague once called me into her office to let me know the whole practice group was convinced I was having an affair with the partner and that he was famous for having affairs with young associates and then sending them on glamorous postings overseas. I let my colleague know the rumors had no foundation in truth but never pursued it any further.

At the end of my second year, the specific deal we had worked on was over, and the first partner (whom I enjoyed working with) tried to claim me back on his team. But, the flirtatious partner, who as I said had more clout, never let that happen. He kept pulling me back on his teams. At that stage I was very disillusioned with the practice of the law in a top 10-law firm situation, and I resigned. I felt like I was stuck due to one partner's personal interest in me. After I resigned, his pursuit of me increased and invitations to romantic weekends away in major US cities or Caribbean islands were filling up my mailbox. Gifts started arriving at my door. Again, this never went anywhere - this person was married with children.

A year or two after resigning, I considered the situation again - I have in effect abandoned the practice of commercial law, and a promising practice in a top NYC law firm. I may have ended up in the same place a few years later without this specific partner's intervention, but I'll never know that - and in any case I would have had more experience and more savings, allowing me different decision-making processes on where to go next.

I would appreciate any comments you may wish to make.

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A:

What a frustrating tale! Let's do two things - apply a little 20-20 hindsight to the past, and then see where you can go in the future.

First, it's not clear that you could have affected things any differently or somehow secured a different outcome. You probably could not have been assigned anywhere else as it does sound like this person was very influential. What is disappointing (but unfortunately still occurs more often than it should) is that a well known womanizer gets away with this kind of thing. It certainly represents a significant risk for his firm.

Not only that, it hobbled your career as well. While you didn't enjoy that subject area, and probably were tired of his come-ons, it could be that in fact you do enjoy the practice of law, if it were in some area and with another person. I continue to be struck how often people seem to feel that their first or second experience in the law represents the way things are, with no options for change - when in fact there are different options, law firms are as different as the personalities that inhabit them, practice areas vary one from another, there are abundant opportunities in government and inhouse, and thus there are ways to cure defects. And too often, people believe that they have only two choices: stick with the job as it is, or quit altogether.

You haven't said what you've done in the meantime, although I guess you've left the practice of law entirely. The better approach, in a situation such as the one you've described above, is not to be driven out of the profession altogether under circumstances that are suspect, but to separate the particular situation from your evaluation of the practice of law generally.

Another important point is to make sure that you don't pay personal penalties for someone else's missteps. While this guy sounds like he was a manipulative and inconsiderate rule- and law-breaker, you need to keep your eye on the ball when considering how to react to someone else's arrogance. As you say, had you not left the firm, you'd have more money and experience and probably more opportunities to pursue than you do now. I guess this boils down to being wary about taking steps too much out of "principle" and with too little recognition of how much you might pay in an effort to protect those principles. If the practice of law in fact is not for you, that's fine and leaving was the right step, but if you were just in the wrong place, that conclusion isn't necessarily correct.

Yet another point is about your reaction to being outright told that everyone assumed you were sleeping with the guy. The better course is to communicate to someone in management, or in human resources, what you had heard, so that they were on notice that you were being unfairly singled out for rumors that were unfounded and that might significantly hurt your career.

Having said that, I recognize how hard it is to make good decisions under that kind of pressure, particularly in your first job out of law school. In the future I would suggest that if things get tough on the job, you assess how to change your circumstances in a way that allows you to protect yourself, financially and otherwise, so that you don't unintentionally wind up paying a much higher price in the end. Additionally, reach out to others who perhaps can help you in such a situation.

Sincerely,
Holly English
Principal Consultant, Values at Work