Law Firm Litigation Puts Partners' Associate Feedback Under Microscope: The Morning Minute
The news and analysis you need to start your day.
January 25, 2024 at 06:00 AM
5 minute read
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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM? - Partners struggle to offer feedback to associates, and the racial discrimination and retaliation lawsuit recently filed against Troutman Pepper Hamilton & Sanders and an ongoing trial in which Davis Polk & Wardwell is defending itself against similar accusations demonstrate how the blurry line between constructive criticism and microaggressions serves to complicate the matter. As Law.com's Amanda O'Brien reports, experts suggest setting clear expectations and assuming good intentions on the part of associates when assembling feedback. "Your feedback should enhance not just performance, but also trust, [which is] needed for collaborative problem-solving," said leadership coach Lauren Krasnow. "First: wait for a time and place when you're not stressed out or rushing and when the person is mentally present enough to take in your feedback. Second: be kind, direct, and clear about expectations…Third: 'get curious not furious'—assume, unless or until proven otherwise, that the person tried their best and cares about you and their work."
MASS EFFECT - A mass arbitration case being argued at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit next month could affect the future of the emerging plaintiffs-lawyer strategy more broadly, legal experts told Law.com's Avalon Zoppo. Electronics giant Samsung is challenging a lower court order that it pay more than $4 million in arbitration initiation fees associated with tens of thousands of arbitration claims accusing the company of violating Illinois' biometric privacy laws. As companies have imposed consumer contracts in recent years forbidding class actions and mandating arbitration, plaintiffs lawyers have turned to coordinating large groups of individual demands against the same business instead. "The conceptual question is whether companies are going to be able to avoid paying the fees for arbitrators that they agreed to pay in all of the contracts that they asked us to sign over all these years," said Brian Fitzpatrick, a Vanderbilt University law professor specializing in class-action litigation. "This [appeal] is part of the cat-and-mouse game between the companies and class action lawyers."
ON THE RADAR - Adam K. Doerr and Emma W. Perry of Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson have stepped in to defend automotive services company Driven Brands Holdings and its CEO Jonathan G. Fitzpatrick in a pending shareholder class action. The action, filed Dec. 22 in North Carolina Western District Court by Terpening Law; Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman; and VanOverbeke, Michaud & Timmony, accuses the defendants of failing to disclose its issues with efficiently and effectively integrating into the auto glass repair services market. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr., is 3:23-cv-00895, Genesee County Employees' Retirement System v. Driven Brands Holdings Inc. et al. Stay up on the latest state and federal litigation, as well as the latest corporate deals, with Law.com Radar.
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