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Lawyers will seek stipulated dismissal of fired associate’s bias suit against Kirkland & Ellis

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 14, 2025, 2:35 pm CDT

A fired associate and Kirkland & Ellis plan to ask a court to toss the lawyer’s federal lawsuit against the law firm alleging gender bias and retaliation, according to an April 8 docket entry.

The former associate, Zoya Kovalenko, had alleged in an October 2022 suit that male associates in the intellectual property litigation group at Kirkland & Ellis were treated better and paid more money than women. Kovalenko claimed that she was fired in September 2021 after complaining about disparate treatment and was then falsely told that poor performance was the reason that she was let go.

U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California ruled in September 2024 that Kovalenko could sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, violation of California anti-discrimination law and violation of the Equal Pay Act. But Gilliam tossed a defamation claim based on a performance review.

Law360 reported earlier this month on Kovalenko’s plan to seek a stipulated dismissal, revealed in a case management statement.

Kovalenko did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal email seeking comment.

Kirkland & Ellis is represented by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe lawyers, who did not immediately reply to the Journal’s email request for comment.

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The Modern Law Library

Legal thriller author David Ellis’ day job? Appellate court justice

By Lee Rawles

August 29, 2024, 8:41 am CDT

Justice David W. Ellis has served on the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District for nearly 10 years. But readers may know him better as author David Ellis, bestselling writer of more than a dozen legal thrillers.

Ellis had enjoyed creative writing as a youth, he tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast.

But during his college and law school years, he was focused solely on his legal career path. It wasn’t until he had been in practice for a few years that this changed. During a vacation at the beach, he suddenly decided that he was going to write a novel—and once that goal was set, he worked relentlessly toward it. And in 2002, he won a prestigious Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for that first novel, Line of Vision.

Both branches of Ellis’ career have seen tremendous returns. He made national news in 2009 as the prosecutor of the impeachment of then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich before the state senate. He was the youngest-serving justice in 2014 when he joined the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District, which serves Chicago and Cook County. And along the way, he published 11 novels, including the four-book Jason Kolarich series. He was a finalist for the ABA Journal-sponsored Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2012 and 2013. He has also co-written nine books with James Patterson, the latest of which (Lies He Told Me) will be released in September.

In this episode, Ellis and Rawles discuss his July release, The Best Lies. The germ of an idea that became The Best Lies started off with the notion of a main character who was a diagnosed pathological liar.

When the book opens, Leo Balanoff, a criminal defense attorney in Chicago, has just been arrested for murder. Police have collected DNA and fingerprints at the scene that are a match for a college-era bar fight that Leo was charged for, and the victim had an ugly history with one of Leo’s clients.

Over the course of The Best Lies, twists and turns across multiple timelines and through multiple points of view begin to reveal what really happened. Ellis weaves a tale combining corporate espionage, violin concertos, police corruption and the Estonian mob.

Ellis also discusses his writing process, his 3:30 a.m. wake-up time, the similarities in his creative and legal writing, and how his judicial ethics concerns sometimes impact his editorial decisions.

In This Podcast:

David W. Ellis. (Photo by Kevin Kuster)

David W. Ellis is a judge and a No. 1 New York Times-bestselling, Edgar Award-winning author of 11 novels of crime fiction, as well as nine books co-authored with James Patterson. In December 2014, Ellis was sworn in as the youngest-serving justice of the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District. Ellis lives outside Chicago with his wife and three children.