Legal News

Managing Intra-Law-Firm Kerfuffles: Arbitrate or Litigate?

By Dan Slater

We see lawyers suing lawyers all the time, for everything from employment discrimination to religious discrimination to, of course, sexual-orientation discrimination.

They always generate a good bit of gossip in the legal world, but here’s a question we’ve never asked ourselves: Why not use mandatory arbitration to settle these disputes? Today’s NLJ takes a look at that issue, reporting that “a recent wave of lawsuits against law firms brought by their attorneys has some firms looking to mandatory arbitration as a way to gain control over such disputes.”

But arbitration may not be well-suited to law-firm spats, the piece says. Why? Because associates don’t want the partnership circumscribing their rights and remedies, and also because the idea that arbitration keeps embarassing disputes under wraps could be turning into a myth, especially in this Brave New World of pesky legal bloggers.

A big concern of Bill Campbell, a DLA Piper partner who serves as the firm’s GC, is the impression arbitration provisions can create. “Your attorneys can perceive that you are materially changing their position vis-a-vis the firm and attempting to circumscribe the rights they might otherwise have,” he said.

The desire to keep disputes confidential is, theoretically at least, a major reason law firms might turn to mandatory arbitration, the NLJ reports, but it may not work. Would the tale of Aaron Charney, the S&C associate who sued his former firm last year for sexual-orientation discrimination, have stayed confidential if Charney was forced to arbitrate? The idea that mandatory arbitration will shield law firms from the embarrassment of such actions these days is “a complete myth,” said Leslie Corwin, a partner with Greenberg Traurig’s New York office. “It’s going to get out there.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 31, 1969 (boomark / email).