It's seven in the afternoon and I am driving through the roads. I've just had a very tough day at work. These days, things are getting tougher all the damn time. Oh, before I continue, I suppose that introductions are in order. My name is Jason Guillaume and I am a young Haitian-American man living in the city of Boston. I am a lawyer working for Randolph & Travis, a small but powerful firm in Bean town.
I've been working on a tough case for a long time. I was representing Michael Rivers, a young man who works in the advertising industry. He claimed to have been pressured into an affair with his very attractive and powerful boss, Leanne Baxter and that he got fired when he put an end to their affair. He was attempting to sue her for sexual harassment. I took the case. I was only twenty three years old, fresh out of law school and having passed the bar exam the first time around. This was one of my first cases.
Cases like these are difficult. I knew that women with power abused it just as much as their male counterparts did but the general public didn't seem to think so. Trying a female-on-male case of sexual harassment would be tough on any lawyer. It was tough on me. I approached miss Baxter's lawyers with an offer to settle. They laughed in our faces and decided to take their chances with a jury. Want to know the surprising denouement of this affair? We won. A six-woman, six-man jury found our case to be viable and we won. There was a ruling in our favor. I won one million dollars for my client. That's the good news. The bad news is that I got passed over for the opportunity to make partner. I was too young to make partner at the firm. Even with my impressive wins. I was offered the spot of Associate, a step below partner. But I didn't feel like taking it.
You probably have no idea of the frustration I feel. I have tried seventeen cases so far in my career and I've won most of them. Not bad for a young lawyer, huh? The firm of Randolph & Travis was founded by Anthony Randolph and Jennifer Travis. They, along with a lawyer named Kurt Van Allen, are the Partners. The undisputed rulers of the firm. Below them are the Associates, Julie Albright, Michael Mendoza, Luke Anderson, Roger Troy and Anne Wellington. Below the Associates are the rookies. I'm the only rookie.
Yes, I left the firm that day because I thought I was being treated unfairly. Van Allen, the only guy I could stand at the firm told me that perhaps I could go home and think it over. To make Associate at the firm while at such a young age would be an impressive accomplishment indeed. But I felt like I deserved better. I had won seemingly impossible cases. A female executive harassed a male employee and terminated him unjustly, and I won a settlement for the guy. Most lawyers would walk away from such a case because it was next to impossible to win, thanks to some heavy-duty gender bias against men in the current justice and civil systems.