Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grasso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Jury selection continues in the trial of former Minneapolis police
Speaker 1: officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd, despite
Speaker 1: concerns that the unprecedented twenty seven million dollars settlement with
Speaker 1: Floyd's family would taint the jurisperceptions. The defense attorney argued
Speaker 1: that the city's unusual decision to announce the settlement just
Speaker 1: as the criminal trial begins could prevent Chauvin from receiving
Speaker 1: a fair trial. The judge has yet to decide on
Speaker 1: the defense attorney's renewed motion to move the trial out
Speaker 1: of Minneapolis, and both sides clashed today over how much
Speaker 1: the jury should hear of Floyd's own actions during a
Speaker 1: drug arrest. In joining me is Krista Groshek, a former
Speaker 1: public defender and managing attorney of Groshek Law in Minneapolis, Christa.
Speaker 1: How unusual is it to have a civil settlement before
Speaker 1: a criminal trial. It's extraordinarily unusual. In fact, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's ever happened in Minnesota. The cases that I
Speaker 1: am familiar with and some other ones that I um
Speaker 1: looked up all perceived in the same way. The criminal
Speaker 1: case goes to trial first and then the civil case
Speaker 1: gets judicated. So this is extraordinarily strange. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's been sort of postulated that there's a fair amount
Speaker 1: of manipulation and maneuvering with some of these things, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how one gets past that idea when
Speaker 1: you see this settlement occurring. In jury selection now on
Speaker 1: one hand, at least to the curred in jury selection
Speaker 1: right for sure. If it hadn't, I don't know how
Speaker 1: they could move forward. I think a mistrial motion would
Speaker 1: have been granted. But this has never happened before, and
Speaker 1: we've never had a settlement of this size before. I
Speaker 1: mean this, this is an astronomical settlement. Explain why the
Speaker 1: news of the settlement might prejudice the jury. It is
Speaker 1: a very very difficult things to get jurors to understand
Speaker 1: the difference between you know, different kinds of litigation in cases,
Speaker 1: especially what it involves the same set of facts. I think,
Speaker 1: for example, with the O J. Case, Ray was acquitted
Speaker 1: but then later paid the family a large civil settlement.
Speaker 1: There was a number of people who once they saw
Speaker 1: that went oh well of course, because he was guilty, right,
Speaker 1: So so the same inference flies there that I think
Speaker 1: is likely to apply here. I don't know how a
Speaker 1: jury can conceptually wrap their head around that, especially because
Speaker 1: the most information they're going to be given about the
Speaker 1: civil case is in jury selection, and the courts like
Speaker 1: it's civil, different standards of proof, different lawyers write, different
Speaker 1: courts state versus federal. Don't worry yourself about that. I
Speaker 1: don't think that is enough of an explanation for them
Speaker 1: to hang their hats on to go, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to disregard the fact that that happened
Speaker 1: is hugely prejudicial to the defense, and in fact, it's
Speaker 1: kind of ridiculous. Um, I think at best, if you're responsible.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is Keith Ellison as our Minnesota Attorney General,
Speaker 1: and his office is executing Derek Chauvin. His son is
Speaker 1: on the Minneapolis City Council that awarded this large civil settlement.
Speaker 1: When Keith Ellison was asked if he knew about the
Speaker 1: settlement prior to it being announced, his answer was no comment.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Crump, the family's attorney, has said, well, it's the
Speaker 1: family's Seventh Amendment right and also that the publicity about
Speaker 1: the settlement is slight compared to the publicity about George
Speaker 1: Floyd's death. I think that's a ridiculous assertion. Let's see
Speaker 1: it in the Seventh Amendment. So people have a right
Speaker 1: to you know, have their controversies examined in court and settled. Okay,
Speaker 1: we know that. But you know certainly that talks about
Speaker 1: dollar settlements. Right, this is about money. This is about
Speaker 1: Savin's fighting for his liberty, his life, his reputation. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't so much just blame the family,
Speaker 1: and I don't blame Crump. Fine, you know, he's going
Speaker 1: to push for whatever leverage he can get at whatever
Speaker 1: time he can get it. He can do that. There's
Speaker 1: something wrong with him doing out. Lawyers positioned themselves all
Speaker 1: the time, right, it's our job to do that. He
Speaker 1: positioned his clients well, and he got, you know, a
Speaker 1: great settlement to them. So I don't think the family
Speaker 1: is doing anything wrong. I think the city was irresponsible.
Speaker 1: I mean, the city, you know, in theory to want
Speaker 1: all of its citizens to have a fair trial. I
Speaker 1: understand they also want their citizens not to be victims
Speaker 1: of what they believe was police brutality, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: there's a time and a place to figure that out
Speaker 1: and still afford the person on trial of fair trial.
Speaker 1: I think the city government is to blame, and Jacob
Speaker 1: Fry is that's part of it. He's our mayor. And
Speaker 1: he opened his huge mouth shortly after this video footage
Speaker 1: came out and he said he think said Derek Scholwen
Speaker 1: and his cap you know colleagues are all guilty. And
Speaker 1: he fired him without pay, you know or whatever. His
Speaker 1: police aren't fired him without pay, and he publicized it
Speaker 1: then so did our governor, so the chief of police.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys have engaged in this pattern of
Speaker 1: irresponsibility since the beginning, and frankly, my opinion, they should
Speaker 1: be ashamed. When this was first brought up by the defense,
Speaker 1: the judge seemed to indicate that, yes, you know, this
Speaker 1: was a concern that there might be a problem. He
Speaker 1: called back some of the jurors and requestioned them and
Speaker 1: got rid of two. But it seems as if it's
Speaker 1: going to be very hard to move the trial, to
Speaker 1: get him to move the trial out of Minneapolis once
Speaker 1: jury selections already started. So this judge is a guy
Speaker 1: on a mission. And he approaches all of his cases
Speaker 1: the way I've I've tried cases in front of him.
Speaker 1: When you're set for trial, you go trial. He keeps
Speaker 1: cases moving. He doesn't allow for a lot of what
Speaker 1: I would call d aliensis or timely thing in jury selection.
Speaker 1: Some judges are more liberal about it. You can really
Speaker 1: get to know your jury is more. He doesn't really
Speaker 1: allow for a lot of that. He takes the reins
Speaker 1: like he did when he brought the seven jurors back,
Speaker 1: so frequently asked questions, so kind of hurry lawyers along.
Speaker 1: He wants cases to move. And you know the city
Speaker 1: has spent millions of dollars and getting this case ready
Speaker 1: to try. From your additional officers, snipers that sit on
Speaker 1: the roof, you know, there's no court trials and jury
Speaker 1: trials happening in Hennison County. Yellow. They might add one
Speaker 1: more for some reason, but that was the plan. The
Speaker 1: Chauvin trial gets the whole courthouse, twenty six floors and
Speaker 1: twenty six things for courtrooms a piece. Hundreds of court
Speaker 1: hearings are shut down because of Chauvin. And so I
Speaker 1: think he's on a mission. He's gonna try to make
Speaker 1: that happen, and you know, he's kind of in a pickle.
Speaker 1: This is out there now, right, and so it's time
Speaker 1: going to cure it and people really going to forget
Speaker 1: about it. I don't know. I think that's unlikely. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it continue would really helps. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a greater likelihood that people outstate, you know, living in
Speaker 1: rural areas are less engaged and I'm not watching the
Speaker 1: trial every day like we are here in Minneapolis. I
Speaker 1: personally thought from the beginning that would have been the
Speaker 1: right move, you know, moved this trial out states. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of advantages that come to
Speaker 1: the defense if you move without state. It tends to
Speaker 1: be that people who live in rural areas. I'm more
Speaker 1: pro police, so I think the other thing the court
Speaker 1: thought and of security. I mean, Henneton County has state
Speaker 1: of the art everything, and so they'd be in a
Speaker 1: better position people wise, and security from electronics, you know,
Speaker 1: contraptions that they used to monitor and watch people. He
Speaker 1: thought that could do it better there. But he's in
Speaker 1: a bad spot. What do you do? It's out there,
Speaker 1: and so now he's got to determine if the lawyers
Speaker 1: can answers questions to get to the heart of but
Speaker 1: not they're biased. And whether or not he's got a
Speaker 1: bias or poison pool, that's what he's got to figure out,
Speaker 1: and that's going to take time. So I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's out of the question, but it does seem like
Speaker 1: if he can push through, he will, and that's consistent
Speaker 1: with what I know of Judge k. Hill. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the motions that are pending. The defense
Speaker 1: wants to tell the jury about Floyd's arrest for drugs
Speaker 1: in how likely is it that the judge will allow
Speaker 1: that evidence? In the difference between the defense bringing the
Speaker 1: motion in the past and now is that. It's my
Speaker 1: understanding that the defense was recently disclosed about a thousand
Speaker 1: pages of additional information, some of which included details about
Speaker 1: that arrest and in particular what Mr Floyd was told
Speaker 1: about his use of opioids at that arrest, and I
Speaker 1: think jud Candle is really interested in it. The new
Speaker 1: information showed that he behaved almost identically to how he
Speaker 1: did in the case that's being tried, you know, saying
Speaker 1: he couldn't breathe calling out for his mama, claiming to
Speaker 1: be disabled. What they saw was, you know, he was
Speaker 1: literally eating chewing drugs in front of them because they
Speaker 1: I guess, I've made an arrest for possession or styles
Speaker 1: of controlled substances, and so he's shotting, you know, handfuls
Speaker 1: of sentinel pills into his mouth. What they found when
Speaker 1: they took him to the hospital later to claiming again
Speaker 1: of having troubled breathing, is that he hadn't ingested so
Speaker 1: much opioid that he was at risk then for a
Speaker 1: heart attack, and he was told that then, and so
Speaker 1: this becomes evidence that particularly relevant to the defenses theory
Speaker 1: of causation, right that it was the drugs, or it
Speaker 1: was the covid, or it was other health condition like
Speaker 1: you know, being prone to heart disease, whatever that caused
Speaker 1: his death, not the the knee on the neck. And
Speaker 1: so typically speaking, this kind of evidence is called alternative
Speaker 1: perpetrator evidence. Judge keeps calling it reverse fregal. So that's
Speaker 1: where a defense attorney would say, hey, you know, my
Speaker 1: clients didn't shoot him, this other guy did. Well, we
Speaker 1: know nobody else had their knee on neck. And so
Speaker 1: what it is is this is an alternative cause type argument.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a creative way to look at
Speaker 1: that legal tool, if you will, or theory. And I
Speaker 1: think the judge is really interested in letting the defense
Speaker 1: introduce at least a part of that because it bolsters
Speaker 1: their causation theory. And it sounds to me if he
Speaker 1: does let it in, he'll create a very nuanced order
Speaker 1: that says you can let this in but not that in.
Speaker 1: If you step over here, then that's going to be
Speaker 1: a problem because the other side can introduce that. But
Speaker 1: I think he's particularly interested in giving the defense at
Speaker 1: least an opportunity to present some of that. The prosecutor
Speaker 1: said that the defense is doing a full on trial
Speaker 1: of George Floyd who's not on trial. Doesn't that happen
Speaker 1: frequently in criminal cases the defense tries to bring in
Speaker 1: information that may not be helpful to the victim. You're
Speaker 1: exactly right. You know, there's limits to when and how
Speaker 1: we do that, for example, in a rape case as
Speaker 1: the rape shield. So you know, if my theory of
Speaker 1: the cases, she was you know, or he was quote
Speaker 1: unquote consenting, or the one who invited the encounter. And
Speaker 1: I want to point to the fact that they do
Speaker 1: this on a regular basis this is a pattern. I
Speaker 1: might have difficulty doing that. But if I want to
Speaker 1: introduce evidence that my client was setting this person up,
Speaker 1: because when they claimed right before and they set somebody
Speaker 1: else up with fault allegations, you know, this becomes that
Speaker 1: victim's modus operandi and it supports my claim that the
Speaker 1: charges are fault. So character evidence isn't typically admitted, but
Speaker 1: if you can fit it into an exception like modus
Speaker 1: operandi appsence of mistake, right, you can get it in
Speaker 1: typically speaking, And this is where this trial has sort
Speaker 1: of turned on its head. Is that productive trying to
Speaker 1: introduce this stuff on defense? They try to dirty up
Speaker 1: the defendant by saying, well, this is what he always does,
Speaker 1: right know. Reverse freetel allows the defense to introduce this
Speaker 1: as to alternative perpetrators, and now this judge is saying
Speaker 1: it also applies to alternative causes. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much we're really dirtying up George Floyd's character
Speaker 1: with regard to allege drug use, because we know from
Speaker 1: the incident, you know, in the case that we're trying,
Speaker 1: he had enough sent and on a system you know,
Speaker 1: I could kill him. That's already out there, it is
Speaker 1: what it is. Do you think that in the end
Speaker 1: that it's going to be the jurors looking at that
Speaker 1: video for nine minutes and how hard is it to
Speaker 1: overcome that? In some ways as good that that video
Speaker 1: went viral when it did, because everybody's seen it were
Speaker 1: sort of desensitized to it right to a degree, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean the first time I watched it, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: it made me tear up, you know, the second or
Speaker 1: third time, right, you just get more used to the
Speaker 1: fact that that's what happened. I think, um, what the
Speaker 1: defense will try to do is place a lot of
Speaker 1: emphasis on their experts, who are going to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I you know, I see the video, but when I
Speaker 1: look at the forensic evidence, there is no merit to
Speaker 1: the contention that the knee on the neck is what
Speaker 1: killed him. And so you know, really working hard to
Speaker 1: take emotion out of that. And I think the defense
Speaker 1: will be sensible and argue, look, we're not saying this
Speaker 1: is like great police behavior. We're not even saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, this was probably the best choice to make,
Speaker 1: but it's not criminal, right, we can we we cannot
Speaker 1: like this, we can you know, want things to be
Speaker 1: different in the future. Right. We know there's some laws
Speaker 1: pass will address that, but this isn't criminal because remember,
Speaker 1: in order for Chauvin to be guilty, he had to
Speaker 1: have caused the death, and in light of everything else
Speaker 1: that Floyd had going on, you know, in his body literally,
Speaker 1: the state just can't prove that. So we cannot like this,
Speaker 1: and we can believe that change is warranted, right and
Speaker 1: rules and regulations, um, But that doesn't mean that Chauvin's guilty.
Speaker 1: Thanks Krista. That's Krista Grosscheck, managing attorney of gros Check Law.
Speaker 1: There are some surprising results in the latest jobs data
Speaker 1: concerning men who have graduate and professional credentials. Joining me
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox. Justin people usually think
Speaker 1: the more education you have, the better your job is.
Speaker 1: What do the stats show? They show that that's generally true.
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much across the board, if you have
Speaker 1: more education, you're both more likely to be employed and
Speaker 1: your wages are higher. But I was looking at the
Speaker 1: February job data for various things, especially comparing men and
Speaker 1: women in different categories and how they have fared over
Speaker 1: the past here, and I noticed, I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: happening for a few years. It turned out that men
Speaker 1: who just have a bachelor's degree have a higher employment rate,
Speaker 1: a higher percentage of all of them have jobs than
Speaker 1: men who have an advanced degree. And that's nothing like
Speaker 1: that that I know of anywhere else in the statistics
Speaker 1: where more education results in less employment. They've only been
Speaker 1: releasing those statistics in two thousand fifteen, and it's been
Speaker 1: true almost every month since then. Just to clarify, it's
Speaker 1: not true with women. Correct, Women who um have advanced
Speaker 1: degrees are more likely to have jobs than women with
Speaker 1: just a bachelor's degree. What's the percentage of men in
Speaker 1: the population who have graduate or professional degrees. Researchers looked
Speaker 1: into this. I can't say for certain not, but I
Speaker 1: checked in with a couple of people who've done work
Speaker 1: on both sociologists actually have done work on gender and
Speaker 1: education and employment, and neither of them had ever noticed
Speaker 1: this before, although one of them now wants to look
Speaker 1: into it. And what can we attribute this to, I mean,
Speaker 1: possibly nothing at all. It's just it's a pretty small difference,
Speaker 1: and you know, it might not be any big deal.
Speaker 1: I guess the things that sort of we're going around
Speaker 1: in my head and with a couple of people I
Speaker 1: talked to were One possibility is because in the pay data,
Speaker 1: which doesn't come out quite as frequently, but men with
Speaker 1: advanced degrees, especially professional degrees like MBAs, they make more
Speaker 1: money than anybody else, and so it's not like this
Speaker 1: is some disadvantaged, struggling group. So it might be that
Speaker 1: a bunch of them just quit their job made so
Speaker 1: much money that they've dropped out of the labor force.
Speaker 1: Another one that has but suggested to be by a
Speaker 1: couple of people since the thing we've published, is that
Speaker 1: men with advanced degrees are more likely to be married
Speaker 1: to her success women, and you know, might have dropped
Speaker 1: out of their labor force because their wife has become
Speaker 1: a ceo UM. The only thing is that it's just
Speaker 1: a little harder to imagine that those numbers of people
Speaker 1: are so large that they can really affect this. It's
Speaker 1: like that, although once again the number of men with
Speaker 1: advanced degrees is pretty large too. So basically number one
Speaker 1: answer to why this discrimancy is there is probably not
Speaker 1: a big deal, maybe a kirk of the data, maybe
Speaker 1: having to do with some risks dropping out. But the
Speaker 1: other thing that I've watched over the last couple of
Speaker 1: years i've looked at education data, is men really are
Speaker 1: becoming much less likely than women to get degrees of
Speaker 1: pretty much any sort. I mean, it's been true for
Speaker 1: undergraduate degrees since the seventies, graduate school enrollment overall, since
Speaker 1: law school. It just happened a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, that women became the majority of law students,
Speaker 1: And the most recent data is from the fall of
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, women made up fifty six percent of
Speaker 1: undergraduate in sixty of graduate students. There are studies done
Speaker 1: of like like the highest prestige PhD programs, they're still
Speaker 1: dominated by men, the highest paying jobs, and laws still
Speaker 1: dominated by and but you look at the fields where
Speaker 1: women sort of dominate the graduate degree, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them they're not super high paid, but they're super
Speaker 1: low unemployment rates, like nursing and education, And so maybe
Speaker 1: there's something actually going on there where women are doing
Speaker 1: a somewhat better job of targeting their education for employment.
Speaker 1: Although the one caveat there is still overall, across most
Speaker 1: different groups by education and race and a lot women
Speaker 1: are less likely to be employed than men are partly
Speaker 1: just because they tend to get stuck with care responsibilities
Speaker 1: for kids and other relatives that men used to don't.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about law school and lawyers? I mean,
Speaker 1: basically law school had sort of resisted the trend towards
Speaker 1: being majority women that other a lot of other programs had,
Speaker 1: but it finally and and it definitely has been a
Speaker 1: bee in some quarters that Trump getting elected, although I
Speaker 1: can't really explain why it would have happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, but basically a lot of women, we're sort
Speaker 1: of strongly motivated to act and look for ways to
Speaker 1: fight for their own rights and other people's rights, and
Speaker 1: that that had driven this bump in law school admissions,
Speaker 1: because I mean, law school applications have been following for
Speaker 1: a long time and they finally sort of bottomed out
Speaker 1: and bounced back a little bit over the last five years.
Speaker 1: It's women that are driving that, not men. And what
Speaker 1: about the earnings of men and women? I mean, in general,
Speaker 1: they're higher for men were just about everything they have
Speaker 1: annual censusy with those annual data, and basically, you know,
Speaker 1: the highest earnings group by education as men with professional
Speaker 1: degrees who have median earnings of a hundred thirty six
Speaker 1: thousand in two thousand nineteen, and women with professional degrees
Speaker 1: have median earnings of eighty eight thousand, three one, so
Speaker 1: a lot different and those with just bachelor's degree. It's
Speaker 1: actually a smaller gap for men as for women. Thanks
Speaker 1: Justin That's Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox. Jones day system
Speaker 1: for paying attorneys is so mysterious that some have dubbed
Speaker 1: it a black box, but five lawyers who claimed the
Speaker 1: black box waters down women lawyers compensation recently dropped their
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the firm. The women had alleged that paid
Speaker 1: decisions are controlled exclusively by jones Day's managing partner based
Speaker 1: on subjective factors that aren't disclosed to the firm's lawyers,
Speaker 1: But five of the six women who brought the suit
Speaker 1: told a federal judge on March eleven that they're withdrawing it.
Speaker 1: Their attorneys and jones Day representatives declined to say whether
Speaker 1: the case had been settled. The lawsuit will go forward,
Speaker 1: with one plaintiff, former jones Day lawyer Katrina Henderson, continuing
Speaker 1: the suit. Joining me is Aaron mulvaney, Senior legal reporter
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Law Aaron first of all, explain why the
Speaker 1: compensation system at Jones's Day is referred to as a
Speaker 1: black box. So Jones Day has been excused of having
Speaker 1: that black box, UM because these female attorneys that sued
Speaker 1: the law firm say that the managers keep it very
Speaker 1: secret what other partners are getting paid, and so it's
Speaker 1: basically a matter of transparency about the compensation among lawyers
Speaker 1: at the firm. Is a managing partner making all these
Speaker 1: decisions without input from other partners? Is that unusual in
Speaker 1: a law firm. I'm not sure if it's unusual, But
Speaker 1: the female attorneys who pointed it out UM in their
Speaker 1: lawsuits UM say that that led to that system that
Speaker 1: kind of led that kept in secret and there was
Speaker 1: a a possible bias coming from a top down system
Speaker 1: that that had a preference for possibly male partners, was
Speaker 1: the claim and the lawsuit, and they also claimed that
Speaker 1: it was unusual among law firms UM to have that
Speaker 1: kind of system. And as far as this lawsuit, five
Speaker 1: of the six women are withdrawing. Tell us about that
Speaker 1: the lawsuit is still going on but with less people. Yes,
Speaker 1: the lawsuits that was filed UM. The news last week
Speaker 1: was that uh, five of the six women who filed
Speaker 1: who were part of the original lawsuit UM withdrew their
Speaker 1: claims and one of the women will be moving forward,
Speaker 1: but the others will not be. And there are very
Speaker 1: few details on whether there was that was because if
Speaker 1: there was a settlement UM or something like that, what
Speaker 1: else could it be besides a settlement. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: imagine what else would get five people to withdraw their complaint. Well,
Speaker 1: in a statement the women, the women said that the
Speaker 1: paid data that was perfected by the firm UM. They
Speaker 1: said that the review of pay data that Jones Day
Speaker 1: was forced to turn over didn't support allegations of widespread
Speaker 1: pay disparities. So it's it's possible they didn't think they
Speaker 1: had a case moving forward, but obviously I'm just speculating
Speaker 1: at this At this point, I think one of the
Speaker 1: purposes of this lawsuit was to try to UM to
Speaker 1: have a voice for all the female lawyers at the
Speaker 1: firm and not just a few of them, And so
Speaker 1: I think that it's unclear what happened. You know, the
Speaker 1: lawyers on both sides are being mum about what exactly
Speaker 1: happened in this case, is the problem with a black
Speaker 1: box or a system with no transparency that then there
Speaker 1: is a reason to suspect that there are disparities in compensation.
Speaker 1: I think the answer to that question is that a
Speaker 1: lot of the advocates right now who really want to
Speaker 1: push for equal pay believe that a key to equality
Speaker 1: is transparency and have an empowering workers with knowledge about
Speaker 1: what their coworkers make, and so a lot of states
Speaker 1: have started pushing proposals like that. A few have um
Speaker 1: some some transparency laws are in place, like in California, Washington,
Speaker 1: and Maryland that allow a job applicant to ask a
Speaker 1: salary range for a position, which is almost as far
Speaker 1: as Colorado has gone as far as to ask employers
Speaker 1: to post the job range for that position, um, no
Speaker 1: matter if it's an applicant or um someone who currently
Speaker 1: works there. I think this is kind of the next wave,
Speaker 1: and the conversation about how to get to equal pay
Speaker 1: is to talk about transparency and how to address disparities
Speaker 1: by giving the workers themselves knowledge about what they make.
Speaker 1: Several big law firms have faced discrimination claims in recent years.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the lawsuits against Jones Day and where
Speaker 1: they stand yes. Jones Day has been targeted by UH
Speaker 1: several lawsuits claiming UH equal pay and promotions for female partners.
Speaker 1: There have been settlements UM before there there have also
Speaker 1: been and they've all had these kind of similar complaints
Speaker 1: about lack of transparency about how attorneys are paid and
Speaker 1: you know, even retaliation against UM women who complain about
Speaker 1: this kind of male dominated culture at jones Day. And
Speaker 1: then there have also been lawsuits. Jones Day is also
Speaker 1: fighting a lawsuit UM from a married couple who actually
Speaker 1: worked at jones Day and they they were accusing the
Speaker 1: company of UM Gender and Equities for the firm for
Speaker 1: the leave policy, which is another way that they believe
Speaker 1: that there was an imbalance between men and women at
Speaker 1: the firm. But jones Day is not the only law
Speaker 1: firm to be sued by lawyers. You have Morrison and Forrester.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Morrison and Forrester actually has a similar lawsuit
Speaker 1: UM filed against them by a pair of women lawyers,
Speaker 1: also against the maternity leaves policy and alleging that they
Speaker 1: were punished for taking off time related to pregnancies. And
Speaker 1: that case appears to be heading to trial. And there
Speaker 1: have been other cases against law firms UM that have
Speaker 1: settled Like I mentioned the Jones Day lawsuit previously. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's chad Bourne and Park which is acquired by Norton
Speaker 1: Rose Bulbright. They settled a lawsuit in two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 1: and Ogletry and Deacons Um also settled similar suits and
Speaker 1: and disclosed terms in recent years. A lot of settlements,
Speaker 1: not too many trials. Thanks so much, Aaron. That's Aaron mulvaney,
Speaker 1: senior legal reporter at Bloomberg Law. And that's a for
Speaker 1: this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can
Speaker 1: always at the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and at
Speaker 1: www dot Bloomberg dot com slash podcast Slash Law. I'm
Speaker 1: June Grosso. Thanks so much for listening, and please tune
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