A recent lawsuit was filed in New York state court against the prominent Biglaw firm WilmerHale. The claimant is Jean E. Dassie, a former senior associate in the company’s IP practice group. The firm, known for its significant earnings last year amounting to $1,344,519,000 ranked the 34th spot on the Am Law 100, now finds itself under legal scrutiny due to accusations of racial discrimination.
As outlined by Law360, Dassie, a naturalized citizen from Cameroon believes that most of the alleged discrimination occurred due to his interactions with one of the company’s counsels, Anh-Khoa Tran, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
The root of the conflict, according to Dassie, revolves around a disagreement over establishing protocols for making changes to slideshows for trials in 2022. The complaint states that when Dassie questioned the practicality of Tran’s proposed methods, Tran responded with hostility, emphasizing his position as a counsel and insisting on his way of doing things. This altercation became the foundation of a negative year-end evaluation for Dassie, resulting in an interim review plan. The incident, as per the review, was “inconsistent with WilmerHale culture and values.”
The lawsuit alleges that the firm’s evaluation and the statements within it are defamatory. Dassie believes that WilmerHale accepted Tran’s account of the incident without question due to their prejudiced outlook and perpetuated falsehoods in Dassie’s year-end review.
Dassie claims that despite receiving above-average evaluations for the rest of 2022 and through 2023, this negative review was used as an excuse to let him go from the firm. He further alleges that he was frequently tasked with work beneath his position and unjustly blamed for mistakes.
As of now, WilmerHale has not commented on the lawsuit. Certain sections of the complaint document have been made available by Above the Law for further reading.