Female discrimination
I have been in a customer service "supervisory" position with a company for close to 2 years with the understanding that I would be promoted to manager (I have 10 years prior managerial experience).After proving myself (evalutions are evident to state that I was a powerful impact on not only the department but the co. as a whole) a skillscope evaluation issued for managers, and many discussions which of many were documented via e-mail, I began to train a family member on my responsibilities. This family member ( of male gender) has taken on many of my responsilities without my knowledge. A department meeting was held after several months informing the staff that this gentleman was now taking on the service end of things ( or in other words my job). There was no prior discussion to this and my previous emploees are confused on whom is their immediate superior. There is only one woman in a high power position within this organization and I feel that many x- employess as well as my x- current staff would agree that there is reason for a law suit against a very male oriented company. What are your thoughts based on this trivial amount of information that I'm able to include?
I appreciate your input..
Answers (1)
When Is It Enough
You have told me enough that I would invite you to call me to discuss your case in greater detail.
I don't want to discuss your case in any more detail, but your query provides an opportunity to discuss the purpose of this website, and the way employment lawyers evaluate cases they are considering taking on.
When you post a query on this website, an attorney seeing it is NOT giving you personal advise, and that is for several reasons, including because we don't know who we are responding to (you could, for example, be a management attorney in a case in which I'm representing an employee, and in which this management attorney is trying to probe for how I think about a particular issue) and we don't know all of the facts (most employment cases are very fact driven, with small details often being very important). Instead, we are using the facts in your query as fodder for a short public article about a topic of interest to the general public about employment law. You (and we employment attorneys responding to queries on this site) don't want the thoughts of someone who might end up being your attorney plastered in a public forum for anyone, including your employer and the employer's attorneys, to see. Because we don't want to jeopardize your position, when we respond to a query I know that I tend to respond in a very generalized way which addresses not much more than what the statutes and case law say the law is. I don't want to give you a specific opinion, or give you specific advise because you are not at that point my client, and because any opinion or advise I might give is a matter of PUBLIC RECORD, which anyone can see.
When it comes to my selecting cases, I know that I am very careful about selecting cases because it takes so much time, effort and money to pursue these cases, with the time, effort and money coming from both my client and me in just about every case I have. It isn't enough during the screening process, for example, for someone to tell me that she believes she's been discriminated against. That really tells me nothing.
I screen cases in stages. The first stage is the initial contact, usually a phone call, but increasingly an e-mail. Generally, phone calls are better, because I can ask for more information, and get a better feel for who you are and why you are contacting me. E-mails (or queries like those posted here) usually provide far too little information for me to make a first cut.
The first cut is to determine whether there is anything there that I can help with. I get a lot of calls and e-mails (and sometimes even letters) in which it is apparent from the start that there is nothing I can do.
The next step is an office visit. Except in very special circumstances, you should never hire an attorney without first meeting that attorney. I really do not want to take on a client I have never met.
The office visit accomplishes several things, and I charge an initial consultation fee in most situations.
Why the consultation fee? Well, it isn't to get rich. The consultation fee I usually charge is discounted heavily from my regular hourly rate.
I charge it because I want to see that you are serious about your claim, and you are committed to it. If you won't make a small investiment at the start of your case, that says to me that you probably don't think a whole lot of the claim, and you probably won't be there when I need you. Remember, I will be investing a lot of time in your case, and, even if you pay me what looks to you like a big fee, the fee probably will not compensate me for all of my time, because very few of my clients are financially able to pay me at my full hourly rate. (In most cases, I am hoping that I will get a fee from some source, that is, from the employer or from a lumpsum award, to make it worth my time.) Many employment cases can involve hundreds of hours of attorney time, and, if you consider that most attorneys, if they could, would charge private individuals an hour rate in the hundreds of dollars per hour, you can see that, if you had to pay an attorney "full freight," it would be costing you a lot of money.
At the office visit, I discuss your case in a lot of detail. I generally a lot 1.5 hours for each initial office visit, but it isn't unusual for such a meeting to run much longer.
I'd say that, in most situations, I know at the end of the initial office visit whether you have a case that is worthwhile, and whether I want to take it. I will also know under what conditions I want to take it.
But there are cases in which one visit is not enough. In those cases, I might take a case for review. I may or may not charge a fee for review. It depends on how good I think the potential case might be, and, also, on whether you can pay a fee.
By "good," I mean a lot of things, including how strong I think the law might be in your favor, how much the case might be worth, and how compelling the facts of your case might be. You might call this last factor the "doing good" factor. That is, your case might have ramifications going far beyond just your situation.
When I take a case for review, that means you have told me enough about your case that I think you probably have a case, but I perceive some big problem that might cause me to think differently. I want to address those problems.
In some cases, the problem might be purely legal. That is, your case presents a novel or rare situation, and I'm not sure how a court might handle it. I want to look at the law to get a better handle on the legal issue.
In other cases, the problem is factual. I know what the law is, but I am not sure that there are enough facts to establish your case under the requirements of the law. To overcome this problem, I might need to do no more than discuss your case with you in more detail. I just need to spend a few more hours with you, discussing your case with you. In other cases, I might need to start contacting witnesses, or start collecting other information, like documents, from you or other sources. In still other cases, I may believe that you alone might not be enough. In some cases, the discrimination might not be against you, but against all people like you. I might believe that to succeed we need to get other people on board.
Of course, a case taken under review can involve a mix of law and facts.
There entire process is far less science and more art, where experience counts as much or more than mere legal knowledge.
posted by David M. Lira | Feb 14, 2003 09:21 AM [EST]
You have told me enough that I would invite you to call me to discuss your case in greater detail.
I don't want to discuss your case in any more detail, but your query provides an opportunity to discuss the purpose of this website, and the way employment lawyers evaluate cases they are considering taking on.
When you post a query on this website, an attorney seeing it is NOT giving you personal advise, and that is for several reasons, including because we don't know who we are responding to (you could, for example, be a management attorney in a case in which I'm representing an employee, and in which this management attorney is trying to probe for how I think about a particular issue) and we don't know all of the facts (most employment cases are very fact driven, with small details often being very important). Instead, we are using the facts in your query as fodder for a short public article about a topic of interest to the general public about employment law. You (and we employment attorneys responding to queries on this site) don't want the thoughts of someone who might end up being your attorney plastered in a public forum for anyone, including your employer and the employer's attorneys, to see. Because we don't want to jeopardize your position, when we respond to a query I know that I tend to respond in a very generalized way which addresses not much more than what the statutes and case law say the law is. I don't want to give you a specific opinion, or give you specific advise because you are not at that point my client, and because any opinion or advise I might give is a matter of PUBLIC RECORD, which anyone can see.
When it comes to my selecting cases, I know that I am very careful about selecting cases because it takes so much time, effort and money to pursue these cases, with the time, effort and money coming from both my client and me in just about every case I have. It isn't enough during the screening process, for example, for someone to tell me that she believes she's been discriminated against. That really tells me nothing.
I screen cases in stages. The first stage is the initial contact, usually a phone call, but increasingly an e-mail. Generally, phone calls are better, because I can ask for more information, and get a better feel for who you are and why you are contacting me. E-mails (or queries like those posted here) usually provide far too little information for me to make a first cut.
The first cut is to determine whether there is anything there that I can help with. I get a lot of calls and e-mails (and sometimes even letters) in which it is apparent from the start that there is nothing I can do.
The next step is an office visit. Except in very special circumstances, you should never hire an attorney without first meeting that attorney. I really do not want to take on a client I have never met.
The office visit accomplishes several things, and I charge an initial consultation fee in most situations.
Why the consultation fee? Well, it isn't to get rich. The consultation fee I usually charge is discounted heavily from my regular hourly rate.
I charge it because I want to see that you are serious about your claim, and you are committed to it. If you won't make a small investiment at the start of your case, that says to me that you probably don't think a whole lot of the claim, and you probably won't be there when I need you. Remember, I will be investing a lot of time in your case, and, even if you pay me what looks to you like a big fee, the fee probably will not compensate me for all of my time, because very few of my clients are financially able to pay me at my full hourly rate. (In most cases, I am hoping that I will get a fee from some source, that is, from the employer or from a lumpsum award, to make it worth my time.) Many employment cases can involve hundreds of hours of attorney time, and, if you consider that most attorneys, if they could, would charge private individuals an hour rate in the hundreds of dollars per hour, you can see that, if you had to pay an attorney "full freight," it would be costing you a lot of money.
At the office visit, I discuss your case in a lot of detail. I generally a lot 1.5 hours for each initial office visit, but it isn't unusual for such a meeting to run much longer.
I'd say that, in most situations, I know at the end of the initial office visit whether you have a case that is worthwhile, and whether I want to take it. I will also know under what conditions I want to take it.
But there are cases in which one visit is not enough. In those cases, I might take a case for review. I may or may not charge a fee for review. It depends on how good I think the potential case might be, and, also, on whether you can pay a fee.
By "good," I mean a lot of things, including how strong I think the law might be in your favor, how much the case might be worth, and how compelling the facts of your case might be. You might call this last factor the "doing good" factor. That is, your case might have ramifications going far beyond just your situation.
When I take a case for review, that means you have told me enough about your case that I think you probably have a case, but I perceive some big problem that might cause me to think differently. I want to address those problems.
In some cases, the problem might be purely legal. That is, your case presents a novel or rare situation, and I'm not sure how a court might handle it. I want to look at the law to get a better handle on the legal issue.
In other cases, the problem is factual. I know what the law is, but I am not sure that there are enough facts to establish your case under the requirements of the law. To overcome this problem, I might need to do no more than discuss your case with you in more detail. I just need to spend a few more hours with you, discussing your case with you. In other cases, I might need to start contacting witnesses, or start collecting other information, like documents, from you or other sources. In still other cases, I may believe that you alone might not be enough. In some cases, the discrimination might not be against you, but against all people like you. I might believe that to succeed we need to get other people on board.
Of course, a case taken under review can involve a mix of law and facts.
There entire process is far less science and more art, where experience counts as much or more than mere legal knowledge.
posted by David M. Lira | Feb 14, 2003 09:21 AM [EST]
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