Deidre Dare was our Lawyer of theDayWeekend back in January. Judging from the traffic on that post, we assume most of you know her story. If not, here are the quick and dirty details:Dare, a Columbia Law grad, was a senior associate in Allen & Overy's Moscow office. She was having fun expat adventures and decided to write about them in an online novella that included lots of alcohol, drugs, sex, donkeys, and dwarves. A&O was not a fan of one of its lawyers publishing porn online and made her stop writing it. Then, A&O fired her.
And the firm, unwisely perhaps, revealed exactly why it fired her (instead of just silently including her in the 10% layoff sweep, which resulted in the booting of many in the Moscow office, including Deidre's Russian boyfriend). From a firm statement published by the Lawyer at the time:
Following our normal disciplinary process, we found that Ms Dare's behaviour - in publishing the material she did in the professional name under which she practises, and the way that she has responded to a number of reasonable requests from us since - was unacceptable and totally at odds with the standards of behaviour that we expect from all of our people.
We've therefore terminated her employment.
Well, Deidre e-mailed us this morning with an update on her situation:
I know how you all love to hate me, so I thought you'd be interested in the following news!
I have no idea what the law in the UK, where she's suing, may say. All I know is that the case out to be thrown out, as a matter of policy.
A law firm's partners can fire (expel) a member of the partnership for just about any reason they want:
Courts in other states have held that a partnership may expel a partner for purely business reasons. Further, courts recognize that a law firm can expel a partner to protect relationships both within the firm and with clients. Finally, many courts have held that a partnership can expel a partner without breaching any duty in order to resolve a "fundamental schism."
The fiduciary duty that partners owe one another does not encompass a duty to remain partners or else answer in tort damages.
Bohatch v. Butler & Binion 977 S.W.2d 543 (Tex.1998). And see also id. (Hecht, J., concurring):
At least in the context of professional partnerships, the courts have uniformly recognized that a partner can be expelled to protect relationships both inside the firm and with clients.... Despite statements in these cases that partners cannot expel one of their number for personal profit, in each instance the expelling partners believed that retaining the partner would hurt the firm financially and that the firm—and thus the partners themselves—stood to benefit from the expulsion.
Hence, for example, in Holman v. Coie, 11 Wash.App. 195, 522 P.2d 515 (1974), a law firm escaped liability for having fired a partner whose political speech had disgruntled the chief executive of one of the firm's major clients, the Boeing Corporation. The potential damage to partnership business was all the justification the firm needed.
If a firm can fire a partner, to whom the other partners owe what Cardozo called a duty of the "finest loyalty," so as to protect the firm's name and business, there should be no doubt that an associate can be fired for the same reasons.
Toss this suit in the rubbish bin. It's total BS.