A Black Chicago attorney is suing her former law firm, alleging she was “unceremoniously fired” in retaliation for complaining about one act of discrimination after she spent years working in the office under a racially hostile environment that she claims went unchecked.
Ashley Ogedegbe was hired to work at McDermott Will & Emery in October 2022.
According to ABA Journal, Ogedegbe left her job at her old firm to work at McDermott’s practice under the presumption she’d be working with a “warm, welcoming and collaborative” team.
“Unfortunately, however, this congenial work environment was not available to Black lawyers and particularly Black women,” her suit states.
The complaint alleges the law firm did little to nothing to stop the “egregious and open racism” permeating their office, and that Ogedegbe was fired after reporting only one of the discriminatory incidents she experienced.
According to the complaint, Ogedegbe’s first day on the job included a tour by one Black receptionist who warned her, “Black women don’t last at the firm.”
Ogedegbe’s suit claims that the incidents that followed lent credibility to that statement.
In November 2022, she attended an associate retreat that featured a diversity and inclusion program led by a Black woman presenter.
During the program, associates were asked to answer questions that included, “What do you hide about yourself at work?” and “What are you most proud of?”
The suit states that the answers were electronically displayed on a large screen. To Ogedegbe’s “shock and horror,” her fellow associates’ answers included “multiple egregiously racist and antisemitic comments,” including references to “white pride,” “white skin,” “white power,” and “Nazism.”
“The fact that these comments were made is abhorrent in itself, but even more so because they were made at a diversity and inclusion program – a blatant attempt to threaten and intimidate a disproportionately minority audience. Indeed, the Associates hid behind their ability to post these statements anonymously,” the suit states.
Ogedegbe claimed the office did “virtually nothing” to address the “brazen demonstration of racism. No training or remedial action was taken.
When one of Ogedegbe’s ex-colleagues pressured the firm to issue a formal apology and conduct an internal investigation, “she was directed not to discuss the matter further and terminated shortly thereafter,” the suit states.
The firm’s diversity committee also opted not to issue any written statements for fear they would be leaked to the blog Above the Law, according to the suit.
The firm later claimed that McDermott’s chairman condemned the behavior the day after the program. The suit states that it’s “not clear that this actually occurred,” and, if it did occur, “it occurred at a nonmandatory meeting that was poorly attended.”
In another instance, Ogedegbe was asked to write, present, and publish an article for the firm. However, when it was published, the firm identified the author as another Nigerian associate who worked in an office in a different state.
“There is no more egregious example of the ‘all Black people are the same’ attitude at the Firm than this,” the suit states.
Ogedegbe often displayed outstanding work on multiple occasions, according to the complaint. In one instance, white lawyers who were given the fruit of Ogedegbe’s labor “performed so poorly that Ms. Ogedegbe had to correct their work, but only from behind the scenes.”
In another case, Ogedegbe was told that she was going to need to be the “fall person” after a white income Partner made various mistakes.
Despite facing a “constant barrage of discrimination and inequality,” Ogedegbe still maintained stellar performance reviews in her years on the firm’s staff. Two dozen of those reviews are listed in the complaint.
The complaint states that Ogedegbe was “subjected to blatant and consistent discrimination, including, but not limited to, disparate work allocation and opportunities, exclusion from important trainings, meetings, phone calls, conferences, etc., discriminatory appropriation of Ms. Ogedegbe’s work and the list goes on.”
The conduct and environment Ogedegbe suffered culminated in one final discriminatory incident in fall 2024, which she complained about to a colleague, and eventually to HR.
After she complained, her relationship with the firm began to sour. The suit states that she was “removed from various projects and given fabricated poor performance feedback.”
Even a colleague who often recruited Ogedegbe to join several of his projects because of her excellent performance “retaliatorily” blocked a transfer into his group for one firm initiative after she filed her complaint.
“Ultimately, in March 2025, Ms. Ogedegbe was unceremoniously terminated in retaliation for engaging in protected activity. The Partners that Ms. Ogedegbe worked for most frequently were not even notified about the decision to terminate her,” the suit states.
Ogedegbe is now alleging the firm committed multiple civil rights violations, unlawful employment practices, and discriminatory and retaliatory treatment due to her race.
Her suit seeks punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and reinstatement to her position.
According to her suit, McDermott Will & Emery has “shown a remarkable apathy for hiring,
developing, retaining and promoting people of color, even while it tells the outside world that it is committed to racial diversity.”
Of the firm’s 700 partners, only 22 (3 percent) are Black, and only 9 (1.2 percent) are Black women, according to the complaint. No Black attorneys are part of the firm’s chief executive members, and 10 out of the 11 people on the leadership team are white. The only Black member of the team is the Head of Diversity.
“In reality, the Firm wanted Ms. Ogedegbe in Chicago because it had no Black female attorneys in Chicago, which was hurting its recruitment and client development efforts,” the suit states. “To that end, Ms. Ogedegbe was included in client pitches to help the Firm appear diverse but then given no work when the Firm was retained.”
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