Ms. Yelenick, 62, did not sign the letter, but after looking at a draft, she said in an interview, she “disagreed strongly because the letter contained inaccuracies, including the process
that female partners could use to join any potential class or collective action that a court certifies.”
“My decades of experience,” she said, “has made me aware of the many ways — both overt
and more subtle — in which both institutional structures and informal practices continue to work to impede the advancement, and discount the contributions, of women.”
The third female partner who joined the lawsuit is Jaroslawa Z. Johnson, an American
lawyer who headed Chadbourne’s office in Kiev, Ukraine, for a decade.
Another major factor in partner pay packets is merit pay; Chadbourne in 2015 distributed such money to 44 percent of the male partners
but to only 28 percent of the female partners, according to the filings.
Female law partners on average earn about one-third, or about $300,000, less annually than their male colleagues, according
to a survey of 2,100 partners at law firms nationwide released last fall by a legal search firm, Major, Lindsey & Africa.
She remained in Kiev after the office closed in December 2014, and noted during her time there
that firm data “showed that my revenue generation was higher than many male partners, but my compensation was much lower.”
“Male partners,” she said in an email, “who generated less revenue annually made much more than
I did.” She decided to join the lawsuit, she said, once she read Ms. Campbell’s complaint.