the gist of this story is that Robbie is a powerful and successful liberal attorney who is also an abusive boss. Lithwick is using her pretty considerable platform and influence to defend her because they are friends.
I hate the “sure she was abusive but men are worse” defense so much. An abusive work environment is bad, full stop, even if other environments are even more abusive.
First, male biglaw partners are simply not abusive like that writ large. I've never seen anything like that at any firm I've worked at. Second, is Lithwick's point that because males are abusive, Kaplan can be? That Kaplan's abuse is really OK?
which parallels the metoo movement pretty well. all the celebrities were like 'believe women!' and then their friend would be accused and they would be like '... well not ALL women...'
Didn’t Lithwick also spend 20+ years on the SCOTUS beat totally missing the earth-shattering stories of Thomas, Scalia, and Alito being wholly and completely compromised?
If anything the Times article undersold the gravity of the cooperation with Cuomo. She didn’t just give him generic advice; she specifically told him to go ahead with an illegal retaliation scheme against one of his accusers.
The logical conclusion of Lithwick's reasoning here is that the problem with abusive men is not their abusive behavior, but their maleness. Which would seem to validate a lot of the most disingenuous criticism of MeToo (and feminism writ large).
I’m not really interested in defending biglaw partners but this is very obviously much worse behavior than the average biglaw partner and is on par with the worst partner behavior I’ve ever heard about
None of this made me bat an eye. I’ve worked at law firms, vendors, and in-house and the law firm equities have been some (not all!) horrible people. OMP wore blackface to the office Halloween party bad. It was 2000.
It’s not just BigLaw. I had a partner at a boutique say that he wished he could fire the pregnant women because they messed up his schedule. He laughed at his “joke” but it wasn’t funny.
My boss, who is Jewish and also a lawyer, shrugged and said "OK, no problem. We'll find someone else. Also I need to find out why we let them hire us to begin with."
I don't know what it would take but we need to learn from the consultants.
When I had first started at the consulting firm, they wanted to have me lead a project for a Georgia-based chicken fast food restaurant. I told them I didn't think I could do that because I'm queer.
Fucking hell. I spent two years in a Big 4 consulting firm as a consultant and have been working in legal departments of other consulting firms ever since and like... they do it so much better than law firms do.
Everything you've described is way, way worse than any partner behavior I've experienced or heard of. I agree with @notalawyer.bsky.social that Kaplan's alleged behavior is as bad as any I've heard about.
The extra credit depressing thing about this is that Lithwick has literally written a book about how the steady drip, drip, drip of this drives women out of the law and has real lasting consequences for women everywhere. Or is it only bad when straight white right-wing lawyers and judges do it?
There is so irony here, no doubt.
But I think it is possible that she thrives in a small, cohesive and focused organization but that the management demands of a larger and more diverse organization drive her nuts.
Not a lawyer, but I’ve seen similar situations in tech.
