Great to see her being profiled nationally in the US for her excellent blogging…
The American Lawyer writes..
How a Blogger Spurred a #MeToo Reckoning for New Zealand’s Top Law Firms
https://www.zoelawton.com/metoo-blog.html
After allegations of sexual misconduct rocked the country’s legal industry, Zoe Lawton made it her mission to collect as many victims’ accounts as she could.
Zoë Lawton is a legal researcher by trade. But after a sexual harassment scandal rocked one of New Zealand’s top law firms, she’s become one of the nation’s leading voices on the #MeToo movement.
Her blog, which she launched in late February, cast a spotlight on alleged sexual misconduct in New Zealand’s legal industry, prompting the legal community there to take action to stem harassment and discrimination in the profession.
The idea for the blog came about after women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by senior male partners at Russell McVeagh, one of the largest law firms in New Zealand, while they were law clerks at the firm in 2015 and 2016. The firm commissioned an external review, and last week an 89-page report found “a work hard, play hard culture that involved excessive drinking and in some instances crude, drunken, and sexually inappropriate behavior” at the firm.
The story was all anyone could talk about when the allegations emerged in February, said Lawton, a senior researcher for the Chief Victims Advisor in New Zealand.
“No one had ever gone to the media and said, ‘I worked at this firm and I was sexually harassed,’” Lawton said.
Despite the media attention the episode received, Lawton worried that the underlying issues would get swept under the rug.
“I thought this definitely isn’t a one-off, and I didn’t want the story to blow over and become yesterday’s news,” Lawton said. “I knew that would happen if there wasn’t something else that kept the conversation going,”
