Employment

Case: Employee vs. Law Firm
Client: Bartko, Zankel, Tarrant & Miller
Venue: U.S. District Court – Northern District of CA, Oakland
Year: 2002

Examples

An employee filed a sexual harassment complaint against the law firm where she worked. The plaintiff accused a senior partner of offensive conduct in the form of bodily contact over an extended period of time.

Challenges:
Our client, the defendant, faced two substantial obstacles. The plaintiff’s complaint could easily evoke jurors’ sympathy, and a senior partner of the firm had, in fact, engaged in fairly egregious behavior.

Solutions:
We confronted these two obstacles separately but as part of a cohesive larger story.

Think Twice established a graphical distinction between the offending senior partner and the firm, as well as between the individual and the company. We created several key document treatments to illustrate that the firm did have an established policy in place and that employees had received an orientation on the subject. Next, we candidly showed what transpired over time by building a color-coded timeline demonstrating the firm’s response to the initial complaint. Finally, a key graphic placed the Human Resources Director in the center of the process and showed how she rapidly resolved the matter, supporting the harassed employee throughout.

Outcome:
Although the senior partner had clearly engaged in offensive conduct, the liability of our client (the law firm) was substantially mitigated by graphically demonstrating the firm’s policies and actions throughout the relevant time period.

Services Provided

• Strategic Planning
• Creative Development
• Graphic Design
• Tutorials
• Document Scanning and Coding

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