Dean Treanor, Dean Shannon, and the Office of Career Strategy,
On March 24, 2018, news broke that a prominent law firm was forcing its incoming summer associates to sign an arbitration agreement with a non-disclosure provision. That firm’s mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure provisions covered all employment-related claims between the employee and the firm, including discrimination and harassment claims. Mandatory arbitration agreements and overbroad non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are harmful in the employment context because they silence victims, conceal wrongdoing, and push discrimination and harassment claims into secretive proceedings that favor employers over employees.
Fortunately, a group of law professors and students focused attention and applied public pressure on this particular law firm’s policy. The firm then decided to drop the NDA and mandatory arbitration requirement not only for summer associates, but also for all associates and staff.[1] Since then, at least two other prominent law firms have publicly announced that they too will no longer require employees, including associates, to sign contracts containing arbitration agreements.[2][3]
Berkeley Law Students sent an open letter to Berkeley Law’s Career Development Office asking it to prohibit employers from using its services if that employer requires any employee, including associates, staff, or summer associates to agree to, as a general condition of employment: (1) a mandatory arbitration agreement, or (2) a non-disclosure agreement that covers discrimination, harassment, or other workplace misconduct.[4]
We call on Georgetown to do the same.
Why is this important?
