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How Top U.S. Law Firms Get Away With Paying Women Less

Kerrie Campbell took on a storied legal industry name in a lawsuit that’s shaking the profession.
Kerrie Campbell

Kerrie Campbell

Photographer: Maggie Shannon for Bloomberg

In January 2014, the law firm Chadbourne & Parke hired Kerrie Campbell to work in its Washington office. After 27 years in the business, she’d finally reached the pinnacle of private law practice: partnership at a top-tier firm—a century-old stalwart of the elite New York bar. In a press release, Chadbourne said, “We are thrilled to welcome her.”

After two years, the thrill was gone. Chadbourne’s managing partner, Andrew Giaccia, and Abbe Lowell, its head of litigation, appeared together at Campbell’s office. Her time at the firm had been rocky. Still, she says she was shocked by what they had to say. The firm’s five-member, all-male management committee had decided that she didn’t “fit” at Chadbourne. She wasn’t being fired, exactly, but she ought to find a new job, they told her. To “incentivize” a swift departure, her compensation would be cut about 60 percent, to $9,000 a month, less than that of a first-year associate right out of law school. Giaccia and Lowell suggested that, to preserve her reputation, she leave quietly.