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On Friday, a discrimination lawsuit was filed against Biglaw firm Kirkland & Ellis, alleging age and disability discrimination. Nancy Lynn Perkins was a legal assistant at the Biglaw giant for almost 30 years, and alleges in the complaint that she was let go from the firm in August 2019 shortly after returning to work following brain surgery.

The amended complaint alleges that though the firm tried to couch the termination as part of a “reduction-in-force,” those that were let go were all over the age of 55. Perkins also alleges that her performance evaluations were well above average:

“Ms. Perkins’ job evaluations were consistently outstanding, with attorneys offering glowing praise for her work, and she was given raises and promotions throughout her career. There can be no claim in this case that Ms. Perkins was not meeting, or exceeding, the lofty expectations set by the Firm.”

As reported by Bloomberg Law, Perkins says that despite these consistently good job reviews after returning to work following brain surgery, she was rushed through a “sham process” of reapplying for her job that resulted in several 55+ employees being laid off:

She underwent surgery in February 2019 to repair a cerebrospinal fluid leak and returned to work two months later. However, a day or two after returning to work, Perkins said was informed that Kirkland would be restructuring its litigation support department and that she would need to reapply for her job.

After several months of what she called “a sham process” that included an online application, mandatory online course in data analytics, and a timed test in an eDiscovery database application, she was brought in to a meeting with two other legal assistants and told they did not qualify for the new positions in litigation support and was given one hour to leave.

The complaint further alleges that at the same time Perkins was being let go from the firm, it was “advertising on its website that it needed candidates for ‘new positions’ with the Firm with job descriptions that were nearly identical to the job description for Ms. Perkins’ position with the Firm.”

Perkins told Bloomberg Law that the decision to sue the firm was not one she undertook lightly:

“I didn’t want to do it [sue the firm] because I don’t want to be adversarial to some place I spent 30 years of my life,” Perkins said.

“I don’t want to do it, but on the other hand I want to hold my head up high, I did nothing wrong. I gave my best, I worked my hardest, even after brain surgery I came back and never complained,” she said.

The firm has not commented on the lawsuit.

Read the complaint below.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

The Florida bar exam should have been called off when Indiana realized the ILG-provided platform wouldn’t support its far smaller test. The Florida bar exam should have been called off when its own test couldn’t even be run because of rampant issues. It definitely should have been called off before the Board of Bar Examiners went public claiming that everything was fixed — despite all indications to the contrary — and staked their reputation on a Monday trial run.

After all these off-ramps along the way, the Florida bar exam was called off at roughly ten to 11 p.m. on Sunday night. If that seems irresponsibly and cruelly close to the Wednesday testing date, note that many of us expected them to wait until today’s test failed and then call off the Wednesday exam sometime Tuesday morning. So, I guess… this is better?

The Florida Board of Bar Examiners, with the approval of the Supreme Court of Florida, announces that the bar examination that was scheduled for Wednesday, August 19, will not go forward. Despite the board’s best efforts to offer a licensure opportunity in August, it was determined that administering a secure and reliable remote bar examination in August was not technically feasible. In addition, the live trial of the examination software scheduled for Monday, August 17 is also canceled.

Ahem…

If only they’d known about these technical problems earlier! Surely they found themselves totally blindsided to learn that the platform wasn’t ready! Why wasn’t someone out there was explaining last week that the test wouldn’t work if they went into the weekend without having run a test?

But the Board called us all crazy for having these concerns. They went out of their way to issue statements assuring everyone that these were relatively trifling hiccups and that the test would go on. Assuming they weren’t trying to lie to everyone last week then they were deep, deep into lying to themselves until Sunday.

I don’t know if there’s any way at all to reach the population of grizzled attorneys who have forfeited the last shred of human sympathy long ago, but just consider the work that went into preparing for the bar exam and then consider the last two weeks leading up to it was marked by the state failing to meet its pre-test deadlines and then ultimately canceling it overnight giving most applicants a little over 48 hours of notice. Try to imagine taking the useless knowledge crammed into your head in the home stretch before the test and being told that you’ll just have to hold onto that until… October… maybe?

The board remains committed to offering an examination to applicants in 2020 and will reschedule the examination for a date to be determined in October. The October examination will have the same content as the examination that had been scheduled for August. The board will announce the date and other information for the October examination in the coming weeks. When this information is announced, August 2020 applicants will have the opportunity to take the October examination or to postpone to the February 2021 examination.

This amounts to about a month and a half, and while this is a decent amount of time to fiddle with a relatively finished piece of software, the experience of the month that passed from the Indiana bar exam until now fails to provide a lot of confidence in that project. But delusions are hard to dispel and the one that took the examiners all the way until 11 on a Sunday night is still fundamentally unshaken as they want us all to know that they’ve got a PLAN to hold this test in October.

And now we’ve reset the clock to string along these applicants again. Another month of promises, glitches, public relations jockeying, and almost inevitable missed deadlines. Maybe in October applicants will get a whole week’s notice when they cancel the test in lieu of a December administration!

What’s the Sherlock Holmes maxim? Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains no matter how improbable must be the truth. Safely executing the bar exam in 2020 is impossible. It’s time for licensing authorities to begin from that premise and see where it takes them. It could well lead to a better long-term solution.

Earlier: Florida Bar Exam Will Go Next Week… Maybe? Hopefully? Oh God.
Florida STILL Doesn’t Have A Working Bar Exam Platform. Test Is Next Week, By The Way.
Florida Cancels Test Of Online Bar Exam Because, You Know, ‘Issues’
Online Bar Exam Software Still Not Working On Friday, Test On Tuesday
NCBE President Gives Trainwreck Of An Interview

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Recently, a lawyer in the midst of a professional transition asked me: “Wow, how did you make many pivots in your career EASILY”?

After a prolonged pause, I told her: “You don’t know how many NOES I got along the way.”

These noes come in many forms. On your road toward the success you’ll maybe be:

• Ignored by recruiters
• Overlooked by CEOs
• Discounted by managers
• Declined by publishers
• Underestimated by peers
• Rejected by investors
• Laughed at by critics

Or, most likely, some combination of all the above. We must normalize noes and rejection.

Noes happen. Often.

Noes are an integral part of your growth and, ultimately, success.

As you move through your career and accumulates noes, you will also start accumulating accompanying experiences.

For example, years later, over drinks, the same recruiters, CEOs, managers, publishers, peers, investors, and critics, will say “I ALWAYS believed in you!”

Just like noes, these are normal reactions.

They are opportunities to build an even stronger community, propel forward, and have an even greater impact.

And yes, these will be the BEST TABS you will ever pick up after you smile and say nothing.

In your mind, you may craft the most diplomatic “I told you so” response — “I wasn’t persuasive enough in the past. Too bad that you had to take a scenic route to come around.” After all, you are a lawyer!

It turns out that my followers are no strangers to noes. We had a very robust conversation.

For example, Lisa Goldkuhl, a dedicated mother and in-house supervising attorney, said, “The end result always looks easy. It’s like writing a bestselling book: the product looks effortless because no one sees all the grinding and sweat and scrapes and bruises along the way. And you are right that no one believes in you as much as you believe in yourself.” She added, “Be your own cheerleader and star quarterback and wide receiver and defensive lineman! You must learn to play every position.”

Angela Han, corporate counsel at HealthPRO Heritage and “Fit to Practice” Podcast host added, “I get no’d and snubbed on a daily basis. I get snubbed for breakfast. But a girl’s gotta enjoy her breakfast, so she gonna ignore all that.”

Getting noes is scary because it closes doors to roads that we have already been staring down. It can pull the rug out from under our feet and make any happy ending feel far away and even more uncertain. But endings are always uncertain — they’re at the end, after all.

Looking back on your career, now that you know the “ending,” how will you write the beginning and middle of your story?

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

The hedge funds could hardly believe their luck. On Wednesday, they had sued Revlon, accusing it of doing what private-equity owned companies do, which is to say moving valuable assets in such a way as to keep them out of the hands of creditors. The only problem, according to those hedge-fund creditors, was that those assets were collateral backing the $1.8 billion loan they made to the cosmetics giant. As collateral exists to be seized by lenders such as the hedge funds in the event that a company, say one hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic like Revlon, is unable to make its payments on those loans, this was understandably upsetting.

Although quite a few law schools have decided to hold their fall semesters entirely online due to the coronavirus crisis, even more have opted for hybrid models, and school is set to begin in just a matter of days, with orientation for first-year students starting today. Unlike Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown, the majority of the T14 will be welcoming students to their campuses this fall, with the hopes of preventing COVID-19 infections from spreading among members of the student body.

Unfortunately, a student has already tested positive at one of these elite law schools.

Yesterday, UVA Law notified all members of the law school community that a student already on campus has the novel coronavirus. The school is offering a hybrid educational model this fall, and students choose for themselves whether they wanted to take class online or in person. Students were required to submit negative COVID tests before returning to school if they chose to take classes live on campus. First-year students were supposed to have orientation today, and officially start school on Wednesday, with 2Ls and 3Ls returning next week.

UVA Law’s infected student is reportedly self-isolating in Charlottesville. NBC 29 has additional details on what’s happening at the law school:

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) is already at work contact tracing to identify anyone the infected student came into contact with.

“VDH is leading the effort to identify individuals who were in close contact with the student, reaching out to those individuals, and arranging for their quarantine, if necessary,” said in the email to the community. “University and Law School staff are also working to notify and support potentially affected members of our community. We are encouraged by how the health and safety protocols have operated in this case to minimize the spread of the disease and to help the student who became infected in a prompt and effective manner.”

According to NBC 29, the law school still intends to begin classes in person this week, despite the positive COVID test.

We wish the sick UVA Law student — and the school — the best of luck doing battle against the coronavirus this semester.

UVA Law School reports positive COVID-19 test in student body [NBC 29]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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* Costco is defending litigation claiming that its 401(k) plan had excessive management fees. Hard to imagine that Costco didn’t try to save money… [Forbes]

* Lawyers need to be careful about using smart speakers like Amazon Alexa while working from home. [Bloomberg Law]

* A former FBI lawyer was charged on Friday for allegedly falsifying documents related to the Russian election interference investigation. [USA Today]

* The Los Angeles Kings have suspended the actor who wears their mascot’s costume after a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed against the performer. [Yahoo News]

* A candymaker has reached a settlement over empty spaces inside boxes of Mike and Ike’s candy. Never even heard of this candy, guess I won’t be getting an $8 settlement… [Morning Call]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to data collected by Law.com for the A-List Law Firms ranking, which top 20 firm has the highest female equity partner score?

Hint: The Biglaw firm received a 97 (out of 100) for its female equity score, helping the firm take the overall number 2 spot on the list.

See the answer on the next page.