A lawsuit about a lawsuit that touches on everything about 2019?

If time capsules were still a thing (are they still a thing?), and someone wanted to capture issues facing the legal profession in 2019 for a time capsule to be buried… what sort of topics would you choose to include?

Outside of the legal dynamics at play in the political landscape of the nation (which I’m excluding for today just for purposes of sanity), a quick effort to sketch things out on scratch paper might find you listing:

• Risks of the flow of information involving modern technology
• Financial pressures placed on lawyers and law firms
• Continuing difficulties in achieving and maintaining diversity in law firms
• How #metoo and problems of power and sexual misconduct in the workplace play out in law firms.
• The role of businesses other than law firms in the delivery of legal services and what that means for the profession.

I’m probably leaving something out, but those bullet points comprise a pretty good overview of the legal landscape, right? Surely, you couldn’t find one document that would touch all of that to throw into the time capsule?

Well, thanks to a new lawsuit filed in California in May about another lawsuit filed in New York in May, you can now fill your time capsule with just one complaint plus its Exhibit A.

You may already have read any of the stories about this lawsuit that have run at the ABA Journal or in Bloomberg Law or even this Harvard Law School and snark-centric one at Above the Law.

If you want to read the entirety of what would go in the time capsule, you can read the lawsuit filed by Pierce Bainbridge against Donald Lewis (which attaches the suit Lewis filed against Pierce Bainbridge as an exhibit) by downloading the PDF below.

The two documents combined span more than 110 pages, so here’s a summary.

Lewis joined Pierce Bainbridge as a partner in June of 2018 but ended up working there for only 4 or 5 months. He was terminated by the firm in November 2018. Both sides agree that during the five months he was there A LOT happened. They disagree pretty vehemently on exactly what though.

Lewis filed a lawsuit in New York on May 15, 2019 alleging that he was wrongly terminated as a retaliatory matter because Lewis had become aware of financial wrongdoing by Pierce Bainbridge involving misrepresentations about the value of cases to a third-party litigation funding company. Lewis’s lawsuit sought $65 million in total damages with $50 million of those being claimed punitive damages.

In support of his allegations against the firm and his claims that it is a toxic environment for those who work there, Lewis’s lawsuit publicly discloses a litany of internal Pierce Bainbridge communications including what would appear to be not just emails and text messages but some that are indicated as being from the firm’s use of the Slack messaging platform.

That same day, May 15, 2019, Pierce Bainbridge filed a lawsuit against Lewis in California alleging that pre-suit sharing of a draft of the lawsuit with certain people was actionable defamation by Lewis and that by seeking a multi-million settlement to avoid filing the lawsuit, Lewis was engaged in extortion. The firm’s lawsuit also pursues claims of negligent and intentional interference with contractual relations and prospective economic advantage on the theory that Lewis’s effort to spread false information about the firm and its partners is an effort to damage the firm’s relationship with the third-party funding company and its clients and potential future clients.

Pierce Bainbridge contends that Lewis was the subject of credible allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and retaliation leveled against him by an employee of the law firm and that he attempted to obstruct the firm’s internal investigation of those allegations and was terminated on that basis. The firm’s lawsuit paints a portrait of a lateral hire alleged to have “immediately bec[ome] a corrosive presence” at the firm.

The firm alleges that on the same day Lewis was appointed to be an “assigning partner” a legal assistant made a report about an alleged event that would have occurred in June, fewer than 2 months after Lewis arrived, and that involves Lewis doing his best impression of what might happen if Louis C.K. and Matt Lauer were collaborators on a workplace project. In response to the allegations, the firm put Lewis on administrative leave and hired an outside law firm to investigate. While on leave, the firm alleges that Lewis sent an email to many at the firm airing his allegations (many of which apparently ended up the subject of his lawsuit). For that, the firm says they terminated his employment. The firm contends that their outside counsel concluded that the allegations against Lewis were credible.

Lewis, for his part in his lawsuit which spans 486 numbered paragraphs and was not filed pro se, takes issue with the propriety of that investigation as well and alleges that another partner at the firm was terminated after voicing an opinion that Lewis had gotten “a raw deal” from the firm

Using history as a guide, I’m prepared to declare that neither side will win this lawsuit. As a teaching tool, this lawsuit of course is an easy opportunity to repeat a point I’ve made many times before (here and elsewhere) about why so many law firm disputes and lawyer departures ultimately shouldn’t end up in litigation if there is any way to avoid it. The likelihood almost always is that no one “wins.” Everyone loses. And most prominently among the losers are the clients of the law firms/lawyers who don’t want to directly or even indirectly be harmed by the battle and, if they are at all risk averse, have to find themselves wondering whether they want anything to do with any of the players.