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provided to birth mothers is not really disability; it’s “The question is what Jones Day actually does.
a form of additional parental leave.” Regardless of how you could read these written poli-
Lovitt questioned that inference, repeating her cies, we’ve alleged that they give women a minimum
contention that there may be very different reasons of eight weeks regardless of how they are disabled,”
to give leave to different groups. he said. “The law is that this period has to be indi-
“You may be right,” Moss responded. “But the vidualized. You can’t just treat women as members
plaintiffs may also be right that the firm has a pre- of a group sharing statistical similarities.”
sumptive period of eight weeks that it gives to one At the conclusion of the nearly two-hour hearing,
parent or another. At the pleadings stage, I can’t de- Moss said he would take the parties’ arguments un-
cide who’s right on the matter.” der advisement.
When it was Savignac’s turn to argue, he said he ¦

did not dispute that the Pregnancy Discrimination Dan Packel covers change and innovation in the
Act requires women who give birth to be given leave legal services market, and writes a weekly briefing
on the same terms as women suffering from other for Law.com, “The Law Firm Disrupted,” on these
disabilities. But that does not bless a fixed amount subjects. He is based in Philadelphia. Contact him
of leave. at [email protected]. On Twitter at @packeld

Looking Outside the Box for a
Bar Exam Solution

The latest wrinkle in the legal By Mark Dubois
world as a result of the CO-
VID catastrophe concerns this
year’s bar exam. As with just about
everything these days, the proposed
solutions are binary-give the test or
scrap it. I think a middle ground
may be better.
Part of the bargain professions
have struck with their host societ-
ies is an agreement that, in exchange
for an exclusive franchise, they will
guarantee a minimum level of com-
petence and fitness of their members.
Online testing works, unless you’re out of WiFi range.

This is achieved by establishing barriers to entry and staff were legal educators. I had come from full-
retention including minimum levels of education, a time teaching at UConn and Pat King had taught
character and fitness review, a system of ethics and for years as an adjunct at Quinnipiac. We were in-
norms and testing, certification and licensing. How trigued with studying whether there was any way
well those systems work is an open question. of predicting which lawyers would get into trouble,
When we established the office of chief disciplin- either with malpractice or ethics. Were there gaps in
ary counsel, two of the original three lawyers on
¦ Continued on PAGE 18

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