A junior partner at DLA Piper has accused the co-managing partner of the firm's Silicon Valley office of sexually assaulting her multiple times in the months after he recruited her to join the firm.

Vanina Guerrero lodged the allegations against Louis Lehot, who also co-chairs the firm's U.S. emerging growth and venture capital group, in an open letter to DLA Piper U.S. co-chairs Roger Meltzer and Jay Rains, asking them to release her from her mandatory arbitration agreement with the firm.

"No female working at DLA Piper, whether she works as an administrative assistant, paralegal, departmental staff employee, associate lawyer, contract lawyer, of counsel lawyer, contract partner or equity partner, should be forced to litigate claims involving sexual assault and battery or sexual harassment by male lawyers in secret," Guerrero said in the letter.