Michelle A. Lamy 

Michelle A. Lamy is a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, where she specializes in employment and antitrust class actions, plus cases addressing sexual abuse and sex trafficking on behalf of survivors.

She joined the firm as a summer associate in 2014, then took a year to clerk for Senior U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson of San Francisco, a legendary civil rights figure near the end of a distinguished working life as a lawyer, educator and jurist.

“I was in his second-to-last set of clerks before he took inactive status,” Lamy said. “It was an incredible honor to begin my career that way. In Judge Henderson, you saw someone who used every ounce of his power for good. That set a foundation for me to do only work that I believe in.”

In May 2023, Lamy and colleagues achieved a $215 million settlement following a long-fought case on behalf of a class of 1,840 women employees asserting gender pay discrimination claims against Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs. First filed in 2010, the parties were within a month of trial when the defense came to the table. Chen-Oster et al. v. Goldman Sachs & Co. et al ., 1:10-06950 (S.D. N.Y., filed Sept. 15, 2010).

“We had to fight every single inch of the way,” Lamy said. “We were knocking on the trial door. I think there was a belief on their team that their case was stronger than it was and that they’d find a way to get rid of us. Even after we got the class certified in 2018, we had to fight to maintain the certification. Not until their trial team understood that we weren’t going away did they agree to settle.”

It was the second-largest gender bias settlement in advance of employees winning at trial and nearly five times larger than the next largest gender bias class settlement involving a Wall Street firm. In July, Lamy and colleagues sought $72 million in fees.

That big win followed the 2022 settlement for $118 million with Google on similar pay bias claim by female employees. Ellis et al. v. Google Inc. CGC-17-561299 (S.F. Super. Ct., filed Sept. 14, 2017).

“They saw the strength of our case far earlier than Goldman Sachs,” Lamy said. She was proud of the programmatic hiring practices changes and future monitoring built into the deal. “We were conscious of working for future generations of employees as well as for the class,” she said.

Thelton Henderson, she added, was impressed. “He’s told me he’s proud of the work I’m doing, and he’s had glowing things to say about Lieff Cabraser. That means so much to me.”

—John Roemer