I would have appreciated if Antilla had consulted with some Constitutional law experts. She should have noted that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld mandatory arbitration shortly after Judge Motley upheld it in this particular lawsuit.
Antilla captures the culture of Shearson Lehman Bros. and Smith Barney with uncanny accuracy. Any investor -- male or female -- should read this book to understand some of the ways that the Wall Street good old boys network circles the wagons to protect their own.
There are a lot of issues with Wall Street women Antilla doesn't seem to absorb or highlight -- such as that the lead plaintiff, along with many other women in the book and that I know in real life, must do very high powered jobs because their husbands are under-achievers. This doesn't excuse the behavior of the male bosses, but it's certainly an interesting subtext I would have liked to see explored.
Antilla is earnest, and very girls club, often presenting her characters as injured maidens. She doesn't note the fact that many women working in securities come from rough and tumble working class immigrant backgrounds -- the behavior of their fathers and brothers may not have been that different from what they faced at work -- hence a certain amount of tolerance. From Antilla's consistently outraged tone, I must suppose journalism is a much cushier berth than finance.
I would have liked to see a Tom Wolf type treatment of this story, operating on multiple levels of cultural context, full of wit and insight. You won't find it here. Possibly because, as we are told in self-reverential tones in the author's bio, Antilla is a busy working mommy.
The first part of the book lays out the environment where sexual discrimination was prevalent. It's so clearly offensive that it's amazing there wasn't a larger settlement in this case. But this is where the book greatly details the unique twist in the case. The protagonist goes through two lawyers and watches as her lawyer and the opposing lawyer seem to become more in agreement than her and her lawyer. Eventually she's dropped from the settlement even though her name still appears on the class action suit. So while I thought I was a reading a sexual discrimination, the book turned into attorney/client relationships and attorney greed in class action cases.
Do I think the attorneys became more concerned about their large fee than their client? Yes. Do I think the original client could be difficult to deal with? Yes. But the outcome is tragic and no one got what he or she deserved. Justice was not monetarily served for the defendants in my opinion. I strongly recommend this book if you have interest in investment banking, law or women's issues.