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3. Lawyer alleges BigLaw firm fired her 11 days…

Disability Law

Lawyer alleges BigLaw firm fired her 11 days after she disclosed epilepsy diagnosis, violating disability law

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 10, 2025, 9:00 am CDT

A former lawyer at Ballard Spahr has filed a lawsuit alleging that she was fired for taking medical leave after suffering gastrointestinal problems and a seizure.

Kimberly Steefel, a former of counsel for Ballard Spahr, filed the April 8 suit in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York, Law360 reports in a story noted by Above the Law.

Steefel learned that she was being fired in October 2022 on the day that she returned to the law firm’s New York office from medical leave, according to her suit. Only 11 days before she had disclosed her epilepsy diagnosis and her medical provider’s recommendation for an accommodation in the form of a flexible work schedule, the suit says.

Steefel suffered from gastrointestinal problems and what she thought was her first seizure before beginning the medical leave. She later sought “16 reasonable accommodations for her epilepsy,” the suit says.

The accommodations stemmed from the effect of epilepsy on stamina and concentration and the need to “avoid environments pervaded by anxiety and hostility,” which can lower the seizure threshold, according to the suit.

There was no attempt to discuss accommodations, the suit says. Steefel was initially told that her employment would end no later than mid-January 2023, but the date was later pushed back to mid-April 2023.

Before she learned of her firing, Steefel had “received nothing but praise and positive feedback” for her work, the suit says.

Her suit alleges discrimination, retaliation, hostile treatment and wrongful termination on the basis of Steefel’s disabilities and gender in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and state and local anti-discrimination laws.

The suit alleges that the firm has a history of discriminating against disabled people, pointing to Ballard Spahr lawyer job ads with “nonsensical physical requirements” that include the ability to “stand, walk, bend and stoop,” to sit for long periods of time, and to “lift up to 40 pounds.”

Steefel also alleges that her practice group, the employee benefits and executive compensation group, created a hostile work environment on the basis of sex.

The group had a “systematic practice” of “replacing the junior- or mid-level female attorneys with other female attorneys at the same or lower level, thus keeping the cycle of maintaining females at lower-level positions only, and at the same time, hiring into and promoting to more senior-level positions only males,” the suit says.

Ballard Spahr provided this statement to the ABA Journal: “The firm disputes the allegations contained in Ms. Steefel’s complaint, and in particular, that she was terminated due to an alleged disability or her gender. The firm will defend the case vigorously.”

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3. BigLaw firm tones down diversity references…

Diversity

BigLaw firm tones down diversity references on website, citing ‘fluctuating internal and external expectations’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 13, 2025, 10:13 am CST

Updated: K&L Gates has removed references to “diversity” from its website and rebranded its Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Above the Law noted the changes after monitoring BigLaw websites since President Donald Trump took office last month.

According to Above the Law, K&L Gates has removed or changed these references:

  • The link to “Our Commitment to Diversity” on the homepage has been removed.

  • “Diversity and Inclusion” is changed to “Opportunity and Inclusion” on the “About” page.

  • The renamed “Opportunity and Inclusion” page no longer includes diversity percentages for leadership positions.

  • The law firm has removed a sentence reading, “We pledge to follow the Mansfield Rule,” which requires firms seeking certification to commit to certain percentages of diverse candidates for leadership positions.

  • The Diversity and Inclusion Committee has been renamed the Opportunity and Inclusion Committee.

K&L Gates explained the changes in a firmwide email obtained by Above the Law.

The email said K&L Gates is not diminishing its commitment to opportunity and inclusion.

“We are embracing the terminology opportunity and inclusion to more comprehensively express our commitment to fostering a culture that supports and empowers a broad range of individuals with diverse backgrounds and different life experiences,” the email said.

“The website changes are reflective of guidance being received by many clients and others, as entities understandably are taking a hard look at how to preserve their values amid fluctuating internal and external expectations and to ensure they remain compliant with shifting laws and regulations,” the email said.

“To date, the changes on our website have been implemented and led by a cross-section of stakeholders at our firm, including importantly by members of our opportunity and inclusion team. The team is still in the process of making updates to the website—and we can assure you that the feedback we receive will be factored in.”

K&L Gates made similar points in this statement forwarded to the ABA Journal: “Consistent with our long-held values, K&L Gates is committed to advancing opportunity and inclusion across all facets of the firm. Revisions to our website have been implemented and led by a cross-section of stakeholders at our firm, including importantly by members of our Opportunity and Inclusion Committee, and we are and will continue to be in close communication with our entire global team about these changes. Not only do we place great value on our team members’ unique backgrounds, talents and skills, but we also benefit as a firm from the diversity of their lived and learned experiences. We are dedicated to ensuring that every person at K&L Gates feels respected, heard, valued and supported. We have not diminished in any way our long-standing commitment to foster an inclusive, talented team, as we know this enables us to provide the best possible service to our clients and empowers our workforce to thrive.”

Updated Feb. 13 at 11:09 a.m. to include the statement from K&L Gates.

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3. Dive into our favorite long reads of 2024

Year in Review

Dive into our favorite long reads of 2024

By Lee Rawles

December 23, 2024, 9:35 am CST

The end of the year will hopefully bring you some downtime for leisure reading. We’ve curated a list of some of our favorite web and print long reads from 2024. There’s a mix of popular features and some under-the-radar stories that you may have missed. In keeping with the theme, it’s a long list.

In 1991, personal injury lawyers Zachary Bravos and Todd Smith took on the strangest medical malpractice case of their careers—a case that led them to tales of satanic cults, child abuse and cannibalism.

As anyone who pays attention to current events knows all too well, Taylor Swift has become ubiquitous. And in at least two law schools, she’s the subject of a class available to students wanting to gain practical knowledge about the law by studying her various legal entanglements and how she emerged stronger.

There are law firms in which Carrie Garber Siegrist, a senior associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Goodwin Procter, might have had to be secretive about her diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD. But at Goodwin Procter, Garber Siegrist says, she feels embraced and supported.

The Kentucky Derby has long been known as “the fastest two minutes in sports,” but the 150th Run for the Roses on Saturday will take place without Muth, a horse some say may have been the fastest in the field this year.

Pete Pontzer’s story is a reminder that lawyers can have meaningful and fulfilling lives after retirement. However, as Pontzer quickly admonishes, there are some important steps to take long before leaving a full-time legal career.

Serious injuries have occurred when exuberant football fans engaged in the time-honored revelry of making goal posts a trophy of a significant or improbable win. Some of those harmed have sought to lay blame and seek compensation. In several such cases, it took referees in black robes to sort it out.

Now in its 25th year, the esteemed literary magazine’s weekly competition features a wordless single panel cartoon. Contestants submit a caption for the image. The publication’s editors choose their three favorites from the 5,000 to 10,000 entries. Online public voting—with generally more than a half million votes cast—determines the winner. There is no cash prize for winning, but the bragging rights are priceless. Wood is the contest’s most successful participant—by a lot.

An increasing number of law schools around the country are offering cannabis law courses, but some professors think that even more are needed. “We’re still playing catch-up.”

Many public service attorneys had an overwhelming feeling that massive student loan debt would travel through life with them. But many of those attorneys got relief in the past year, thanks to recent changes to the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Critics argue that “excited delirium” has no medical foundation, and that its origins are plagued with racism. The term’s role in high-profile police misconduct cases has prompted major medical organizations to repudiate its use.

There has been an explosion of AI-generated music featuring the living or resurrecting the dead. But as artists push the limits of parody, fair use, right of publicity, infringement and authorship, there is one overarching question: Is any of this stuff legal?

Immigrants coming to the U.S. face legal uncertainties along with difficult living conditions and the pain of family separations. Yet a hope that opportunities will outweigh the travails is strong with many new arrivals. That’s something lawyers who help immigrants understand well—including those who are immigrants themselves.

Each state sets its own rules for formerly incarcerated people who want to practice law. In Kansas, Mississippi and Texas, for example, no one with a felony can practice law. But even for those who live in less restrictive states, there are other hurdles to overcome.

“People are like, ‘Why did you go to law school?’ I tell them, ‘I’m setting up a joke that I’m going to tell in 14 years. I’m a planner,’” Liz Glazer says.

While progress has been made in the past 25 years, members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of the legal profession.

Most dog moms and cat dads accept the hard truth that they will likely outlive their beloved animals. But what happens when pets outlive their humans?

Millennials are more willing than prior generations to switch jobs to achieve a work environment that fits their needs. However, they can “run up against a wall” with billable hours.

Innocence clinics usually don’t work with clients convicted of minor offenses. They focus on more serious crimes where the stakes are much higher: people on death row or those serving life sentences for murder or sexual assault.

Netflix’s Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare, released in December 2023, sounds like a cheesy 1980s slaughter-fest horror film. Sadly, the events relayed by the documentary are far from fiction.

It isn’t often that a bipartisan group of U.S. solicitors general gather in public to discuss their unique role in the legal system and even gripe a little about the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s what happened recently in a packed hotel ballroom before the ABA 2024 Litigation Section Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

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3. Florida Supreme Court tells state bar to…

Diversity

Florida Supreme Court tells state bar to stop funding diversity initiatives

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 6, 2024, 8:21 am CST

The Florida Supreme Court has directed the state bar to stop funding diversity and inclusion initiatives in its new budget.

In response, the Florida Bar will transition its Diversity and Inclusion Committee to a new Membership Outreach Committee that will encourage Florida lawyers to get more involved with the bar, report Florida Bar News, Law360 and Bloomberg Law. Diversity funding will also be moved to the new committee.

The Florida Bar is an arm of the Florida Supreme Court, which has oversight of the bar’s budget, the Florida Bar’s communications director told Law360.

The bar’s current budget called for spending $234,000 on diversity and inclusion, according to Bloomberg Law. The previous fiscal year, the bar spent about $300,000 on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The Florida Supreme Court supports bar participation by all members, according to Paul Flemming, the state supreme court’s director of public information, who was quoted by Law360 and Florida Bar News. As a governmental entity, the bar must treat all members equally and without bias, Flemming said.

The state supreme court’s directive follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision striking down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

But diversity is not the same as affirmative action, according to Merrick L. Gross, a shareholder at Carlton Fields, who spoke with Law360.

“There are lots of ways to support and enhance diversity without affirmative action,” said Gross, who told Law360 that he was speaking for himself and not his law firm. “Acknowledging and understanding diversity can amount to removing barriers and creating truly equal opportunity.”

See also:

“Florida judges can no longer get CLE credit for general ‘fairness and diversity’ courses, state supreme court says”

“Refusing to budge, top Florida court says ABA imposes CLE panel ‘quotas,’ state lawyers can’t get credit for participation”

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3. Relax with our favorite long reads of 2023

Year in Review

Relax with our favorite long reads of 2023

By Lee Rawles

December 22, 2023, 1:50 pm CST

Hopefully you’re going to have some time over the winter holidays to cozy up with a good story. We’ve curated a list of some of our favorite web and print long reads from 2023. There’s a mix of popular features and some under-the-radar stories that you may have missed.

For first-time advocates before the U.S. Supreme Court, it can come as a shock when they realize how close they are to the justices—so close some are just out of their sight line. In the words of Supreme Court veteran Neal Katyal, Chief Justice John Roberts “sees everything—he sees you sweat.”

Lawyers and academics interviewed by the ABA Journal say the application process for the $800 billion loan program, part of the 2020 coronavirus stimulus package known as the CARES Act, was fraught with fibbers. Many doubt that most of the bad actors will be arrested because the volume of fraud seems so high.

It’s rare to meet a 100-year-old lawyer. It’s perhaps even rarer to sit with that lawyer and listen as they reflect on their life and career. Alexander Forger, who joined the centenarian club in February, recently gave the ABA Journal that opportunity.

Joshua Browder first made headlines back in 2015 when he started DoNotPay at age 18, the summer before enrolling in the computer science program at Stanford University. Back then, the curly-haired bespectacled teenager pitched a free chatbot to fight parking tickets. During that period, he came across as the archetypal tech geek—studious, awkward and endearing—promising to rally against corporations and governments and open up the justice system to more Americans.

Lawyers are among the millions who have rushed to ChatGPT, the generative artificial intelligence platform that has taken the world by storm. But after a bug revealed some users’ chat histories and payment data, some attorneys might be thinking, “not so fast.”

“I feel that the historical significance of this case is that it is the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement in America,” Joe Bell says. “We wanted to shine light on the light of truth upon an appalling injustice: why no one has been brought to justice all throughout the years.”

“I think it’s important for lawyers to engage students, to let them know this is what we do, these are the issues we tackle,” says Jonathan Nwagbaraocha, vice chair of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. “Whether they go to law school, whether they practice in the long term, it’s really about getting the word out that this is something they might find interesting.”

For the past two years, singer-songwriter Fiona Apple has volunteered with Courtwatch PG, the largest court watch program in the country, to observe legal proceedings in Prince George’s County, Maryland, from her home in Los Angeles. Apple has also joined a group of advocates calling attention to the concept of court watching and aiming to get more people involved.

Young lawyers are candid about striking a balance between work and their personal lives. For some, that means leaving behind BigLaw’s relentless pace for other kinds of work. For others, it means finding a workplace culture aligned with their priorities and values.

Brian Wallach was preparing for a case in 2017 when he felt a weakness in his left hand. At 36 years old, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois ignored it. He had been on the track and field team at Yale, after all, and he was healthy. Why worry?

Aha moments are often likened to lightning strikes. But California family lawyer Nicole “Nico” Smith’s life-changing decision to become a professional firefighter followed an actual lightning strike.

With the popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube, online armchair detectives have been able to help authorities in some cases by offering tips. But there also have been instances of misinformation, fake experts and unsupported theories being presented as fact and of innocent people being targeted.