Female partners at Chadbourne & Parke's London office are furious with one of their US colleagues after discovering that she has roped them into her class action lawsuit against the firm.

Last month, Washington DC-based litigation partner Kerrie Campbell filed a federal sex discrimination claim against Chadbourne in which she accused it of routinely underpaying women. Campbell also claimed that Chadbourne "actively retaliates against female attorneys who question the firm’s gender discrimination practices”. Campbell's complaint states that after "calling out" management for paying her less than lower-billing male partners, she was told her practice no longer fitted in with the firms' strategic direction and ordered to "quietly leave as soon as possible to 'preserve' her reputation".

However, she has outraged her fellow female partners by framing her complaint as a class action which includes all of them. Alleging that she "and the Class of Chadbourne Partners she seeks to represent" have been "subjected to a systemic pattern and practice of gender discrimination", she states that they have "suffered harm including lost compensation, back pay, employment benefits, and emotional distress".

    Campbell, doing it for their own good 

And now high blood pressure. All but one* of the 15 other female partners, three of whom are based in London, have signed an extraordinary open letter addressed to Campbell's lawyer expressing their fury at having words put in their mouth. "Your complaint claims that it must speak for us because we are too afraid to speak for ourselves", they write. "That is not how we see ourselves and certainly not how any of us believes our clients and colleagues perceive us."

Campbell is still at Chadbourne, presumably getting the stink eye from all sides as more and more of its dirty laundry piles up in public. In the latest salvo, her lawyer replied on Thursday with another open letter defending the class action and claiming to have been contacted by "current and former Chadbourne partners and associates, men and women", who feel it "captured well the claims of gender discrimination" .

Campbell's complaint notes that she joined Chadbourne in 2014 after "bumping into conflicts" at her former firm.

Find both letters here.

*the absentee is understood to be on a goodwill mission and uncontactable.
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Comments

Anonymous 16 September 16 13:18

Its odd that the basis of the complaint by the collective female partners at this firm against the lawyer representing Ms Campbell is not that he has misled the Court and the public to believe that he represents these women or that there is a client retainer in place, but rather that including them he has made them look silly! Inferring that filling such a suit in the first place must undermine them as a gender, collectively. I think their letter in fact lends more credence to Ms Campbell's claim - or at least they failed to put their legal hats on in responding properly.

Anonymous 16 September 16 20:27

Oh lordy. It's like working in an open plan office - too much chatter, gossip and intrigue and no-one getting any work done...