Better Than She Found It

Deeva Shah has one core principle: Leave a place better than you found it. The principle is not theoretical. 

In 2017, while clerking at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, two female colleagues told her they had been sexually harassed on the job. Shah, less than a year out of law school, tried to help them find a reporting mechanism—only to discover there wasn’t an effective one.

“Here I am, a barred attorney, trying to figure out a reporting mechanism in the judiciary that allows for people to report harassment,” Shah says. “I was like, ‘What is the system?’”

What she found was a patchwork of outdated policies that varied from courthouse to courthouse. And the Employment Dispute Resolution Plan that technically governed the federal judiciary was, Shah says, “a suggested plan.” When she finally tracked down a copy, it was a PDF from 1995.

A few months later, allegations from more than a dozen female law clerks against then-9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski became public. So Shah and a group of fellow clerks drafted an open letter to Chief Justice John Roberts calling for systemic reform. They collected more than 850 signatures from current and former clerks across the country, and Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability was born.

To explain why the problem was so widespread, Shah points to the structure of the federal judiciary. Each judge runs their chambers as “a fiefdom,” she says; move from one clerkship to another, and a clerk would encounter different rules.

“You don’t know where to report. You don’t know how to report. You don’t know if that report is going to go directly to your judge, in which case it becomes easier to either not report, or just leave,” Shah says of the time. “The EEOC has a list of traits of a workplace where harassment is likely to flourish, and the judiciary almost falls into each and every one, including: people siloed, one individual with a significant amount of power, disparity in power dynamics in terms of who can report and how, and significant power differences in terms of … people who need a recommendation, who need this job.”

And it’s not just clerks. The federal judiciary employs 30,000 people, including public defenders, probation officers and courthouse staff, none of whom, Shah says, have access to basic workplace protections. “The ADA doesn’t apply. The Civil Rights Act doesn’t apply. All these mechanisms that [people] take for granted do not apply to the federal judiciary as an employer.”

The Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability letter produced incremental results. The federal judiciary created working groups, revised the Employment Dispute Resolution Plan and established a reporting hotline. Shah and her colleagues were invited to Washington, D.C., to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

“All of the changes the judiciary made were better than what existed before,” Shah says. “But it wasn’t enough, in our view.”

When Shah joined Keker, Van Nest & Peters in 2019, it was two years after Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability launched. She walked into her new managing partner’s office and told him she wanted to continue the work. “He was like, ‘Of course you should keep doing this work,’” Shah says. “I said, ‘Other law firms will not want to because it’s against the federal judiciary.’ And he said, ‘What’s your response to that?’”

Her answer has become something of a mantra: “It’s not against the federal judiciary. We all want this to be a better-functioning system because we all believe in it. That’s why we’re lawyers.”

In 2021, Keker, Van Nest & Peters filed an amicus brief in a case where a federal judiciary employee had sued over harassment claims. The brief, co-drafted with Willkie Farr—the only other firm willing to sign on, according to Shah—documented the problems that persisted under the new plan. The dispute resolution process, Shah says, carries no monetary damages, as complainants cannot recover for harm they’ve suffered. The most that a successful complaint might yield is a transfer to another judge.

The brief’s central argument was blunt: “If there are no teeth to the remedy that you offer, then why would anyone pursue a complaint?” And the brief was used as a major reference point in the Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability’s support of the bipartisan Judiciary Accountability Act. In 2022, Shah served as counsel to Laura Minor, a 23-year employee of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts who testified before Congress about the persistent shortcomings of the system. The act was introduced as a result of Minor’s testimony, but never passed.

Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability continues primarily through its network—connecting those who have experienced misconduct with attorneys willing to take their cases. Shah is among the few willing to represent complainants. And she still hopes the Judiciary Accountability Act, or something like it, will pass. 

“But none of this matters if there’s not a cultural shift,” she says. “I’m seeing some new judges who are really interested in creating an environment where their clerks not only work for them, but thrive. A clerkship is such a pivotal opportunity to impart how to be a thoughtful, kind and meaningful lawyer. But I also think there’s always going to be people who get in positions of power and don’t see their role as bettering the world around them.”

As a litigator focusing on intellectual property and technology disputes, the lessons Shah learned fighting for workplace reform have shaped how she builds trial teams. “The siloed method doesn’t work,” she says. “Creating an environment where people of color and women can be trial litigators and be seen in their authentic, genuine way … that’s important to me.”

So, too, is fearlessness in taking bold positions.

“I wasn’t afraid to speak up,” she says. “Being willing to say, ‘I’m going to take this where it needs to go’—that’s really important for trial work.”