Workplace bullying outed: Paul, Hastings is out-lawyered by the lawyer they just fired

Lawyer, n.: One skilled in circumvention of the law.

Bierce, Ambrose The Devil’s Dictionary, (1881-1906, serial)

Here’s the same old story: company hits hard times and has to make some cuts. So, they trump up reasons to force a little attrition of the more expensive employees. Of course, you start by culling the weak — the ones who can believably be said to be “not up to snuff” (even though, of course, they are excellent employees, but they are more socially stigmatized — pregnant, minority, old, female . . . you know the ones on the cover of the company recruiting manual).

Here’s the twist: Ms. Shinyung Oh, the wronged employee, blasted back an e mail to the other, oh, 1000 or so colleagues, calling Paul Hastings out for this kind of crap.

What a smart lawyer!

This is the only way to address abuse. The hallmark of abuse is secrecy. The only way to defeat abuse is to shine a light on it.

The abusers will never voluntarily change their ways — why should they? Humanity schmoomanity. But this lawyer thought it through – what do bullies do afterwards?

The smear campaign. Here, she protected her own reputation by a pre-emptive strike: Ms. Oh publicly outed the law firm, calling the bullying for what it is. She made sure she was not, however subtly, smeared as an incompetent lawyer or otherwise whispered to be “not partnership material”.

Now, this is a little tough when you’re a whistleblower — whistleblowers are always subject to retaliation. In fact, women whistleblowers are far more penalized than are men.

So what to make of the blast e mail? Maybe Ms. Oh was blowing off steam, and impulsively blasted the e mail. Doesn’t seem like it to me — she states that her reason for blasting it is to make sure other associates don’t have a crushed self-esteem, and understand this is just a mind game by PH to increase profits-per-partner.

I would argue she is a hero — she took action against an injustice at great expense to herself. Professor Phillip Zimbardo, the author of “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil ,” is studying ordinary everyday people who risk it all, physically or socially, for a greater good — here are excerpts from his essay, “The Banality of Heroism”

. . .Heroism is different than altruism. Where altruism emphasizes selfless acts that assist others, heroism entails the potential for deeper personal sacrifice. The core of heroism revolves around the individual’s commitment to a noble purpose and the willingness to accept the consequences of fighting for that purpose. . . .

Social sacrifices are more subtle. For example, in 2002, Dr. Tom Cahill, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, risked his credibility as a career scientist by calling press conference to openly challenge the EPA’s findings that the air near Ground Zero was safe to breathe in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. His willingness to “go public” was challenged by the government and by some fellow scientists. Like Cahill, whistleblowers in government and business often face ostracism, physical threat, and the loss of their jobs . . .

I know, “hero” sounds like “superhero” — and it’s tough to valorize a $600++/hr lawyer (I’m guessing). My point is that instead of slunking off dejectedly, Ms. Oh risked it all for the greater good.

And Ms. Oh had detected the pulse of public opinion. I’m going to guess that there’s a pent up anxiety at Big Law — at Big Corp — at Big everything. Her blast e mail speaks volumes for the pent up demand for some kind of certainty in people’s lives.

One more point: Ms. Oh was fired just after a miscarriage. Why is this significant? You get in trouble firing a pregnant woman. So wait until she’s not pregnant any more and then fire her. My guess is that most women who are just married or who are whispered to be trying to have a child are going to all of a sudden go from being exemplary to being “needs improvement.” Pathetic. “Diversity” means not getting caught canning women of childbearing years.

Look, we’ve all seen “diversity” programs, but the reality is that power is an aphrodisiac. Where you have people with absolute power, they don’t care. It’s the Stanford Prison Experiment refined and well dressed and blue-booked.

“Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s hard to get it back in!”

–H.R. Haldeman

And, of course, there’s the charm offensive. The employer hits the cover of “World’s Best Place To Work Because We Are So Humane” or something. But, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and it’s going to be tough for Paul,Hastings to try to cover up their misdeeds.

Now, Paul Hastings, once they ambushed the vulnerable employees with a trumped-up bad job evaluation, then came in for the sucker punch: “You’ll sign this ‘non-disparagement‘ termination agreement, won’t you?”. My opinion: a veiled threat, even with three months’ pay.

Ms. Oh refused to sign. (I have doubts that sending the e mail would be disparagement anyway, because it is merely a recitation of facts.)

About the only justice in this is that some of the older lawyers who hit mandatory retirement age were also encouraged to leave — and those lawyers were known, in the day, to act the same way. (This is my opinion only, and my understanding from second hand information). So what goes around comes around. But more importantly, these bullying methods have worked for a really, really long time.

Ms. Oh, in one little press of a button, changed the playing field. The balance of power is shifted.

I don’t know what Paul Hastings did, but here are the tried-and-true methods of high-end workplace bullying (of the ones I’ve seen, anyway):

1. Take away work and complain the person isn’t working hard enough

2. Assign extremely difficult tasks, and then tell them how trivial they are

3. Assign trivial tasks — like ordering lunch — in front of peers, and then complain that the person “doesn’t even know how to order lunch”

4. When someone notices what a great job the employee is doing, privately pull that person aside and plant some toxic little lie — “yes, they’re doing well, the counseling has really worked. . . ”

5. Encourage shunning: (Dwight shuns Andy)

6. Make the person an object of ridicule (clothes, hair, car, etc.)

7. At meetings, show disrespect and contempt — act like a 14 year old does when their parent talks: roll eyes when this person makes remarks, make eye contact with others indicating this person is not worthy of respect, criticize stupid stuff (why are you using that color font?) and never indicate the person has done a good job. Think: fraternity hazing. Or military academy.

8. The usual: critique everything and anything, note all mistakes no matter how minor, dis’ any past accomplishments and wins, take away budgets, support staff, refuse to schedule meetings, banish to far away office, insinuate unattractive qualities (“you put your name alone on that paper? Are you so arrogant that you didn’t put the firm name?”)you know the drill —

Of course, all of this is intentional infliction of emotional distress. The answer, “Well, they should know the abuse isn’t personal!” just doesn’t cut it. The abuse is personal, the person is portrayed in a false light and has reputation damage from which they may never recover — which, in itself is emotional harm. Is it shocking? I think so — when you’ve spent every waking hour devoted to climbing the company or law firm ladder, postponed your family life, sacrificed birthdays, school plays, family life, and then the agreement is breached — that’s a huge betrayal.
I don’t know the answer — perhaps if an employer requires you to be on call 24/7 then they should be in a position of a fiduciary — they owe you if you owe them. (I can hear it now, “That’s life, swivelchair, you can get exploited if you don’t watch out, you have to watch your own back. . . “) At least in some states, there is implicit a notion of good faith and fair dealing — “at will” employment or no. If the employer takes a totally cynical view, they need to state that up front. At least that would be better than trying to totally crush the reputation of the employee in covering up for bad management.

Hmmm. I went back to tone this post down in an edit, and instead, I threw some gasoline on the fire.

Here are selected excerpts from the blast e mail (the whole thing is posted here):

From: [Redacted]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 10:14 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: My departure

The circumstances surrounding my departure from Paul Hastings have been deeply disappointing. It is one thing to ignore an email sent as a colleague is waiting to have her uterus scraped after a miscarriage, but it is wholly another level of heartlessness to lay her off six days after that. [Partner X] is the only one who expressed any sympathy after my miscarriage, and I am grateful to him for that.

. . .

. . .Had you explained that the office had been directed to reduce the number of associates and I was chosen because of my high billable rate and low billable hours, I would have appreciated such directness, even though the consequences of blindly raising billable rates to an unsustainable degree is plainly predictable. What I do not understand is the attempt to blame the associate for not bringing in the business that should have been brought in by each of you and to hide your personal failures by attempting to tarnish my excellent performance record and looking to undermine my sense of self esteem.

. . .

Indeed, less than a week before this year’s bizarre performance review, I was again told by the same partner that my work is great and that the slow business in no way reflected on my performance. A week later, I was given a mediocre performance review and told that I should worry about whether I have a future at Paul Hastings. When I asked for specific examples of my alleged deficiencies, I received no response. When I asked for an explanation as to why I had been downgraded in so many performance categories when I received absolutely no criticism throughout the year and my prior year’s review was stellar, I was told that my prior year’s performance assessment may have been “over-inflated.” What a startling response.

Tags: "paul hastings", "Shinyung Oh", bully, employee, employment law, law firm, schrute, shun, work