Wake Forest University School of Law.

A longtime Wake Forest University legal writing professor has sued the university, claiming she was discriminated against and subjected to harassment due to her age, gender and medical condition when her teaching contract was not renewed in September.

Plaintiff Barbara Lentz had taught at the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, law school since 2000, but her complaint alleges an eroding relationship with law school administrators in her final years at the school centered on her salary and employment status—she was never a tenured member of the faculty.

Attempts to reach Lentz for comment Wednesday were unsuccessful, and a spokeswomen for the law school said the university does not comment on pending litigation, but the 21-page complaint highlights many of the same tensions that exist on law faculties across the country: Namely the lower status of legal writing faculty as compared with doctrinal faculty. Legal writing instructors are generally paid less than faculty who teach traditional podium courses, and on many law campuses they work off short-term, renewable contracts.

Many are not eligible for tenure and thus have less input on matters of law school governance. A 2015 report found that 71% of legal writing instructors are women, and that they on average earn slightly more than half of what doctrinal faculty make.

Lentz filed suit against Wake Forest in state court in late October, and on Nov. 22 the suit was removed to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Lentz alleges that she taught 15 different courses during her time at the law school, including the required first-year contracts and an experiential clinic in Nicaragua. But she claims that she was repeatedly rebuffed by administrators when she sought an explanation for why she was paid less than other faculty in light of her heavy teaching load and willingness to teach courses outside the sphere for legal writing.

Her complaint alleges that more than one male faculty member was paid more than she was for the same work. And the school refused to grant her a five-year teaching contract as promised in 2015, she alleges.

"Defendant's practice with plaintiff was to make a promise of employment, but then refuse to provide a timely written agreement of the agreed upon terms," the complaint reads.

Those problems came to a head in September when Lentz was informed via email that employment with the law school was terminated. (Lentz still appears in the faculty directory on law school's website but her Wake Forest email is inactive.)

Among Lentz's myriad claims are that law school administrators violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and Family Medical Leave Act when her teaching contract was ended just weeks after she went to hospital and was diagnosed with hypertension and several other medical issues that forced her to miss her orientation week teaching duties.

Lentz, who is 54, also claims the school had a pattern during the 2017-18 academic year of replacing older employees with younger workers.

"Defendant treated plaintiff disparately in relation to her similarly situated peers that were under the age of 40 and/or significantly younger than plaintiff, and sought to deny to plaintiff the college tuition benefit for dependents which plaintiff had earned," the complaint reads.

Lentz is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.