Partner Reflection: Carolin Guentert

By Carolin Guentert, New York Co-Managing Partner | July 2024

I went to law school knowing that I wanted to work in the public interest sector, with a specific emphasis on gender equity, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. I started my legal career at an international corporate law firm and then had the opportunity to clerk for the Honorable Jack B. Weinstein, whom I admired greatly and who embodied many of the ideals that led me to study law in the first place. After the clerkship, I worked as a clinical teaching fellow in Georgetown University Law Center’s Domestic Violence Clinic, where I taught clinic seminars and learned how to fight for domestic violence survivors who needed an advocate in their corner to navigate the legal system. But once my fellowship ended and I began searching for a long-term position in my field, I faced the question that many recent law graduates confront: how can I do the work that I feel passionately about, in a way that is professionally and financially sustainable for me? And will it matter that certain practice areas would be new to me?

Luckily, I found Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. When I interviewed with the firm in 2019, David Sanford told me that the firm valued employees with diverse career backgrounds who could offer varied perspectives. I would learn the ins and outs of Title VII quickly, he said; what really mattered was tenaciousness and creativity in a legal field that posed constant challenges to our clients’ civil rights.

Since starting at the firm, I have found that to be true. Immediately after joining, I got to work on a proposed pregnancy discrimination class action filed by female attorneys against their law firm and a litigation against Yale University and its all-male fraternities on behalf of students who were subjected to discrimination and a sexually hostile environment. I learned from my talented colleagues how to represent employees in settlement negotiations in a broad range of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation cases. And, increasingly, I was able to take on representation of sexual assault survivors in their civil claims against the institutions that failed to protect them. In other words, it was exactly the work I wanted to be doing, on behalf of clients who are courageously speaking up for systemic change.

I’ve also been thrilled to find that the firm values new attorneys’ development and advancement. I’ll never forget how much time and energy my colleagues poured into helping me prepare for my first deposition, and to this day they are always available to review a brief, moot an oral argument, or work through a difficult legal issue with me. The firm even gave me the opportunity to build out a practice group by co-leading the Sexual Violence, Title IX, and Victims’ Rights Practice Group. In just a few years, I’ve been entrusted with a lot of responsibility and encouraged to take on challenging cases just because it was the right thing to do, neither of which is a given in the legal profession.

I have also learned so much from my clients – students who are challenging discrimination at their schools and universities, employees who were fired for taking parental leave or being caregivers to young children, patients whose doctor abused them, survivors of sexual assault – who take risks every day to hold the individuals and organizations that harmed them accountable.

I feel very lucky to have found this role, at a firm that has been doing this work for 20 years.