In Defense of My Former Colleagues

On Friday, four people from my former firm were allegedly fired over what was initially reported as a security breach. From what I understand, they were accused of discussing confidential internal matters among themselves.

It had nothing to do with clients, no breach of professional responsibility, and no violation of the legal code of conduct. There was no warning given and no fallout from these conversations.

Without getting lost in the specifics, the conduct, as described to me, was akin to water cooler gossip.

What actually matters here isn’t simply if a rule was broken or not, but what a firm’s response reveals about its culture. The issue isn’t the existence of punishment: it’s the way discipline is applied without regard to context or impact of the infraction. The alleged misconduct may have caused some harm, and that shouldn’t be ignored. But focusing solely on the offense misses the deeper story.

Consider two theories of punishment: one based on intent, the other on impact. Intent measures abstractions; impact measures real damage. It’s the difference between punishing someone for willfully breaking a rule and punishing them for the harm caused when they did. That difference matters - because it can lead to radically different outcomes.

A recent study found that when intent is the primary basis for punishment, penalties are consistently harsher, even when the actual outcomes are neutral or cause no harm. In this study, the mere decision to break a rule was enough to significantly increase punishment severity, and changing the fairness of the outcome barely affected the penalty. The authors concluded that intent-heavy systems magnify retribution beyond what is proportionate to the harm, leaving little room for nuance or context.

Choosing an intent-based system of punishment guarantees more severe outcomes by elevating abstract loss over actual harm caused. The impact-based alternative isn’t the absence of punishment: it’s about matching the penalty to the damage done. It recognizes that real people live with the fallout, and that fallout is measured in tangible harm, not theoretical intent.

Critics may argue that an intent-based model of punishment is important for continuity: that it creates a bright line and avoids messy judgment calls. Certainly, that’s true when the facts are clear and the stakes are high. But in practice, it can flatten nuance, treating minor lapses the same as serious breaches. Over time, this rigidity doesn’t just punish misconduct. It erodes trust, drives talent away, and fosters a culture more concerned with avoiding mistakes than doing good work.

Consider a situation where the employees being punished had spotless records: kind, decent people who faced a lapse in professional judgment. Some longtime professionals, others just starting out. Most likely, none of them knew this offense could get them fired - I certainly wouldn’t have.

Let’s analyze the losses in both models of punishment. In the impact model, there’s room for proportionate consequences, room to preserve trust, and room for people to learn from mistakes without being destroyed by them.

And what happens when we dole out punishment on the basis of intent rather than impact? We now have a case study. Four terminations in a single sweep isn’t just about plugging a hole: it’s about sending a message. The swiftness and severity are designed to chill the entire workforce, making it clear that even a single misstep will cost you your job. This model is about making an example, using real human beings to set abstract precedents.

It’s not just the loss of a job: for many, it is the loss of everything. People work their whole lives for these opportunities, only to see them cut short in an instant. Careers collapse, reputations are destroyed. A parent loses the ability to feed their kids. A grandmother re-enters the workforce at 70. A 25-year-old on a visa is put on a plane home. This is what happens when you punish based on abstractions: it erases the human being in front of you and reduces their life to a theoretical offense. But the consequences aren’t theoretical. They are catastrophic.

We’ve grown desensitized to this model of punishment. It’s just business. Brutality gets rationalized. But few grasp the particular brutality here - or the irony of a profession draped in ethics and a firm that claims to value its people. This is personal. These are real people with real lives, and the consequences are measurable: deportation, financial ruin, families upended. It’s not the disregard itself that’s shocking, it’s the level of callousness attached. The real point is scale: you expect a corporate law firm to kick your puppy, not sell it to the meat market.

A few weeks ago, my friend

Qasim Rashid, Esq.

called out an uncomfortable truth of Big Law: the behind-the-scenes damage, a kind of quiet violence you don’t always see. And he’s right. This is institutionalized violence. Is it not violence when a parent is stripped of the ability to support their children, for gossiping? When the system rips away the foundation a family depends on to survive, just to prove a point? That is the true cost of this model.

Firms have the right to fire employees. But when partners exchange casual emails with associates they know are about to be fired - and then can’t face them to deliver the news themselves - that’s shameful. It reflects a profound cowardice, less surprising than it is disappointing. It is calculated. And it is vicious.

The intent model treats human beings like toys: objects to be discarded when inconvenient. And yet these are real people with rich histories, families, flaws, and dreams. It’s no wonder my former group has been hemorrhaging associates: about ten have left this year alone. This is the logical outcome of a deeper dysfunction that permeates the culture at-large and reflects failure from the top down.

Was the conduct wrong? Probably. But you can punish that without destroying someone’s life. Ask yourself: have you ever broken a rule?

This is the real measure of harm: what happens after punishment. It extends far beyond the individuals fired. For employees, it breeds fear, fractures relationships, and hardens cynicism. For the firm, it undermines morale, damages reputation, and weakens the very culture it claims to support. The cost isn’t just measured in turnover: it’s measured in the slow decay of everything that makes a workplace worth belonging to in the first place.

The real breach here wasn’t in the gossip. It was in the bond between the firm and its people, and that cost will outlast all else.