It got ugly fast.
My boss confronted the managing partner about the whole thing. It didn’t go well. From what I can tell, my boss left the managing partner’s office and immediately started consolidating his support with his clients. He had the loyalty of his support staff and basically said screw the rest of the firm.
We started having substantive meetings at lunch, or in hallways, or outside the building. Anywhere there wouldn’t be eavesdropping. The harassment continued, and in truth increased now that the jig was up and they could be as blatant as they wanted.
Strange demands started being levied against our group. “We need your boss’ company cell phone. Where is it?” As if somehow I would have the answer to this, I was vaguely aware he had one but that was the extent of my knowledge about it. My boss was probably one of the more paranoid people I’ve known (although he still didn’t hold a candle to my own free floating paranoia). He hated using the company cell phone and he had solid evidence that the firm was tracking location of the phones as well as anything put on the phones (including photos — there’s a story to this one, but it is too identifiable.) They physically rummaged through his office while he wasn’t there trying to find it. They sent people to his house to try to have him hand it over. I don’t know what they thought was on the phone… but it must have been something really interesting. I’m not sure they ever found it… if they did I’d be willing to be it had been professionally scrubbed prior to them getting their hands on it; again… the paranoia he had was laudable but also apparently merited.
I felt like I was missing some over arching plan. Some of what the firm did was capricious, some just weird. We had a few cases that were losers… as in the law was firmly and completely against us; proven several times over. We’re not even talking maybe some wiggle room… just dead set against us. We requested that we be able to close down the files, instead we were told to string along the clients and keep the file open even though we knew nothing would come out of them.
The firm started trying to concoct a narrative my boss was having an affair with the paralegal… then with a client. Then that he was on drugs. Then that he was using someone else’s drugs. At this point, we weren’t being given more cases. My work had significantly dried up and there were many days I came into work and watched Netflix on my phone until I went home. My boss wasn’t there, I had no work, and the rest of the office had been told to stay away from the lepers. During the day I caught up on TV shows I had missed, and at night I applied to anything that looked halfway passable as a job.
Eventually, the firm got lucky. It was a combination of continued harassment and lucky timing. Although, if you keep up the harassment indefinitely eventually something will happen that can be taken advantage of, and that’s exactly what transpired.
Due to a particularly identifiable bit of malpractice done by the firm (which I won’t go into) one of our cases blew up right before a vital expert deposition. The case value had dropped from a mid-high six figure estimate to approximately zero. My boss had the wind sucked out of his sails and with nothing left on the near horizon, he went on a prior planned vacation. While on vacation, he contracted something almost fatal and ended up in the hospital abroad and then transported back home. This was apparently the perfect time to move against him, and the firm acted quickly.
If I had thought I had nothing to do before, I was about to see what nothing really was. Every case was reassigned. The prognosis was that my boss would be back in about a week, two at the most. None of the cases had anything happening in that time frame. I was there as the associate who had all the info and had been dealing with the cases and could hold down the fort. If needed, I could get my boss on the phone. But no. Everything was assigned away. A legal fiction was being created to support firing him for going on a pre-approved vacation, then for getting ill. Then for not telling them he was in the hospital (delirious). It was tenuous, but it seemed like they thought it was workable. It came fast and furious.
In the midst of all this, I got a job away from the crazy. I put in my notice pretty close to when my boss came back. Most of the files came back. My boss went to go knock some heads, but at this point he knew what was going on. It wasn’t even hidden anymore, why bother. When I left, he told me that at some point he was going to file suit and he’d probably call me up, if I was okay with it, and bring me in as a witness. I told him I’d be happy to… the firm had made my working life hell on a daily basis for months with their weird vendetta.
About 2-3 months after I quit, they fired my former boss. When he left, he took all his staff and clients with him. And he filed a massive employment suit against them. The firm retaliated and filed against him as well. It was a clusterfuck. But I was out… mostly.