Small Law Firms

Firm Parts Ways With Lawyer Who Called Maternity Leave 'Sitting On Your Ass'

There's still a lot of work to be done.

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Asian Chinese Mother bonding time with her baby boy toddler at homeA story in three acts… told over three days. A text leaks from senior attorney Jon Dileno bashing an associate for interviewing for a job while on maternity leave (“collecting salary from the firm while sitting on your ass“). Law firm releases vague lip service statement about turning this “into a positive” without hinting at an apology and characterizing the message as a “heat of the moment” mistake. Managing partner apologizes and announces that the author of the text is no longer associated with the firm.

Perhaps yesterday afternoon’s statement from Zashin & Rich managing partner Stephen Zashin foreshadowed the evening statement declaring that “[a]fter careful consideration, Jon Dileno is no longer with Zashin & Rich” and apologizing to the former associate who dealt with all this. Perhaps the contrast between that message and the earlier “heat of the moment” statement is indicative of the first message landing with a thud.

Either way, the firm has now taken some concrete action in response to this.

But this tidy three act play deserves an epilogue. As explained yesterday, the firm didn’t necessarily need to part with Dileno. There was certainly an argument for that, but the firm could also have approached the response by announcing a reprimand with teeth, unveiling new, specific training and management protocols, and pledging donations or pro bono initiatives. And, of course, apologizing without trying to minimize the incident.

Even with the author gone, there’s a lot of work to do. In the original text, Dileno wrote that he’d proposed firing the associate for interviewing while on leave. If that really happened, the firm had a red flag that needed to be addressed long before the guy hit send on this text. While the firm didn’t take him up on this offer at the time — which is good! — learning when you can ignore a bad idea from a blowhard and when it signals an organizational malignancy requiring active remediation is the sort of thing training can help management understand.

Over the course of covering this story, the overwhelming majority of feedback has shared in my appall, but a dissenter suggested that lawyers at the firm had reason to be frustrated that another attorney used maternity leave to interview.

This is a very bad take.

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It’s also a take that needs to be culturally stamped out wherever it crops up. Because it fundamentally misunderstands how maternity leave works. I could try to explain it, but this does much better than anything I could string together:

When we talk about culture, as the firm’s managing partner does in his statements, this is what it means. Doing the right thing (or at least not doing the wrong thing) is all well and good, but it’s never going to be more than a half-assed solution until everyone understands why it’s right. Everyone has to begin from the same premise and place leave in the right context for any corrective policy to take hold.

Now that this story has a proxy for finality, this high-profile incident will fade over the coming days. There will be another layoff or another merger or Jonathan Turley will embarrass himself somehow and we’ll move on. But just because it’s not top of mind doesn’t mean it’s over — either at this firm or across the legal industry. Lawyers see themselves as problem solvers, but some problems — like toxic misogyny — aren’t “solved” as much as ceaselessly engaged.

That’s the epilogue after the curtain falls on this story.

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Earlier: ‘Collecting Salary From The Firm While Sitting On Your Ass’ Is Certainly ONE Way For A Partner To Describe Maternity Leave
After Text Calling Maternity Leave ‘Sitting On Your Ass,’ Law Firm Looks To Sit On Its Ass In Response

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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