Chai Feldblum (Courtesy photo)

Chai Feldblum, a longtime civil rights advocate and former Obama-era member of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is joining the management-side firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Washington as a partner.

Morgan Lewis said it was hiring Feldblum and her former chief of staff, Sharon Masling, to be a part of a team conducting investigations and cultural assessments at companies. Masling also will be a partner. The two lawyers worked at Georgetown University Law Center before joining the EEOC. They will start Feb. 25 at Morgan Lewis.

Companies have increasingly turned inward amid the #MeToo reckoning, as a new spotlight was trained on sexual misconduct and power imbalances between men and women in the workplace. At the EEOC, Feldblum had been a champion of preventive measures companies can take to minimize harassment.

Philadelphia-based Morgan Lewis, one of the country's largest management-side law firms, has played a leading role in conducting internal probes at companies, and Feldblum and Masling will contribute to that work. Feldblum said a plaintiffs firm wasn't a great fit for the type of preventive assessments and counseling she wants to focus on.

“It seems common sense to me now, but it certainly didn't six months ago,” Feldblum said, explaining her decision to join a management-side firm. “When we realized we can't do this work at the EEOC anymore, we said, 'Let's just take what we were doing and do it from the outside.'”

Feldblum, the first openly lesbian commissioner at the EEOC, would serve eight years there until January 2019. President Donald Trump renominated Feldblum for another term, but Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill blocked the nomination. Conservatives had accused Feldblum of placing greater weight in LGBT equality over religious freedom, a charge she has denied.

Feldblum said she began to plot her next move when it seemed there was a good chance she would not return to the commission. She and Masling decided they wanted to advance the work they'd begun at the EEOC, which issued a report in 2016 outlining ways companies could work to reduce harassment.

Feldblum and Masling said they initially thought about creating a nonprofit, funding a venture on their own or partnering with a plaintiffs firm. Civil rights shops “seemed like a natural location for us. We started there, but we were really looking for preventative work,” Feldblum said. “We wanted to help big employers. I wanted to reach those who are hiring thousands of workers. That's not the traditional type of service that a plaintiffs firm will provide.”

Grace Speights, head of the labor and employment group at Morgan Lewis, was a leading partner on investigations the firm was hired to conduct for corporate clients. The firm's public work included investigations at the Humane Society and NPR.

Grace Speights (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi//ALM)

“We are focusing on how we can help employers, especially large employers, to develop a culture where their workers can thrive,” Speights said.

Masling and Feldblum will not be litigating cases. They plan to meet with senior leaders to get a sense of what the companies already have in place, do a cultural assessment of workplaces and develop and help clients implement plans that includes ideas for leadership, accountability, policies, procedures and training.

“For companies and organizations that want to seize this moment to have the best workplaces possible, we will be there to help,” Feldblum said. “Our end goal will be to help them create a workplace culture in which harassment on any basis doesn't happen in the first place—and if it does happen, that they have a system in place to deal with that promptly and appropriately.”

Masling said the fact Morgan Lewis was using the EEOC's 2016 report attracted them to the firm. “We are translating policy into practice,” Masling said.

Emily Martin, who leads advocacy and policy initiatives at the National Women's Law Center, said the moves of Feldblum and Masling to Morgan Lewis were initially surprising but joining the firm will allow them the chance to work with companies on issues the two lawyers care passionately about.

“They want to engage with employers and find what works and moves the needle,” Martin said.

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Jumping from an agency to a big law firm will mean an adjustment, Martin said. She said a primary question she'd ask herself would focus on whether the effort is making workplaces better or instead only defending problematic behavior. “They feel confident about the answers they received,” Martin said.

Joseph Sellers, partner at the plaintiffs firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, said Feldblum and Masling will be able to bring their knowledge and skills to an existing platform and have a voice in guiding large employers.

“They aren't just offering to assist employers and others with problems that arise but offering to do deep dives into the culture and the workplace dynamics that may provide the context to assess whether the problems exist,” Sellers said. “That could be an incredibly valuable service to provide.”