Student Advocates Taking of Sanctions Against Law Firm

The president of the Law School Council said yesterday he plans to ask various minority law student organizations to "exact sanctions at the national level" against a Chicago law firm that is currently the object of a Law School student's discrimination complaint.

Meldon S. Hollis, a second-year law student, said he will ask the heads of Harvard's minority law student organizations to inform their national chapters about the complaint against the firm of Kirkland and Ellis and to urge them to publicize the case in their national newsletters.

The organizations will include the Black Law Students Association, the Women's Law Association, the Chicano Law Association and the Asian Law Students Association, Hollis said.

'Racially Offensive' Remarks

The case involves a third-year law student, Gail E. Bowman, who filed a formal complaint against a recruiter from Kirkland and Ellis for allegedly making three "racially offensive" remarks to her during a job interview last fall.

According to Bowman, the recruiter, John H. Morrison, told her "the last black to leave [the firm] went to Clorox...isn't that funny, a black man going to work for a bleach company?"

In other comments, Bowman alleged, Morrison told her that the firm had previously hired "a black girl like you, only short," and that the firm "just can't keep black lawyers because corporations hire them...they have to keep the quotas, too."

National Discussion of Case

Hollis said he plans in particular to ask Kenneth Harris of Georgetown University, the national president of the Black Law Students Association, to bring up the Bowman case for discussion in the group's annual annual convention in Washington, D.C., this Thursday and Friday.

Morrison said yesterday he regrets that Hollis and members of minority law student organizations have not continued to write him personally, rather than "carry on a third-person discussion in the press."

"I think the case has already received national attention, and I don't think that further publicity in the newsletters of these organizations would effect any greater change," he said.

Denies Discrimination

Morrison also denied that the firm has discriminatory hiring policies.

Hollis said bringing the Bowman case to national attention is particularly important because "the University's inadequate procedure in dealing with the case is symptomatic of an unwillingness to fulfill its moral obligation to take strong anti-discrimination stances."