Lynne C. Hermle

Is Hermle tired of talking about her mega-win in Ellen Pao's gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against client Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers? Nope. "I'll be forever proud of the great teamwork the trial exemplified both within my team and with my client," she said.

Similar lawsuits keep coming. A laid-off female in-house counsel for Hermle client Broadcom Corp. claimed, in a Central District lawsuit filed last June, that Broadcom has a "pervasive male-preferential paradigm" and a male-dominated workforce that blocks female advancement. The complaint included a Dodd-Frank retaliation claim that Jennifer Davies was fired for reporting securities law violations. To obtain dismissal of that part of the suit, Hermle faced two hurdles to her argument that Davies wasn't covered by the recently enacted law because she reported securities violations only to her company and not to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Hurdle one was a SEC amicus brief siding with Davies' position. Hurdle two was that the majority of district courts that had addressed the question had deferred to the SEC's interpretation of the Wall Street reform and consumer protection law.

Hermle and colleague Joseph C. Liburt, a member of the Ellen Pao team, raised novel arguments in a Dodd-Frank case, offering examples of how the law could be enforced without rendering any statutory language superfluous, contrary to the SEC's contentions. U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford of Santa Ana agreed with Hermle and dismissed the Dodd-Frank claim in its entirety. The rest of the case is set for trial in October.

"Most of us in the defense bar would agree that the number of gender discrimination individual suits and class actions is increasing," Hermle said. "That's because the dialogue about gender and technology in [Silicon] Valley is increasing, a trend that started long before the Pao case appeared on anyone's horizon. We're at the crest of a wave of filings, and it will be interesting to watch this play out."

Hermle's assertion raises larger questions about prejudice against women in the workforce, and it's unclear whether litigation will help. "Why don't the numbers get better in tech and in other professions, including the law?" Hermle said.

? John Roemer