How an Elite Law Firm Allegedly Stole From Its Junior Lawyers

One Lawyer. One Firm. A Paper Trail They’d Rather You Never See.

Alexander Zajac joined Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP on August 15, 2016, as a Student Associate. Finnegan is not some regional outfit; it is a globally recognized intellectual property law powerhouse with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Zajac started at a $100,000 salary with clear written promises about bonuses and tuition reimbursement.

He was promoted to Associate Attorney in March 2019, after successfully completing law school and sitting for the Maryland bar exam. According to Zajac, the firm’s culture was unambiguous: Associates who billed 100 hours over the 2,000-hour annual requirement earned a 10% productivity bonus, 200 hours over earned 20%, and 300 hours over earned 25%. These were not aspirational targets. They were understood throughout the firm.

At the end of fiscal year 2019, Zajac billed over 2,200 hours. That is 200 hours above the baseline requirement. Under the firm’s own internal framework, that performance level should have triggered a 20% productivity bonus. Finnegan paid him nothing.

The Tuition Trap: When “100%” Doesn’t Mean 100%

Zajac’s 2016 offer letter promised reimbursement of 100% of tuition expenses from Fall 2016 through Spring 2018, contingent on maintaining satisfactory performance reviews and grades of B or above. Zajac met both conditions. What he received, however, was reimbursement processed as pre-tax income, not post-tax.

In practical terms, paying tuition reimbursement pre-tax means a portion of that money is clawed back by the IRS before the employee ever sees it. Zajac argues that in customary business practice, a promise of “100% reimbursement” means the employee ends up whole after taxes. Finnegan’s pre-tax processing left him short. The gap: at least $33,789.14 ($33,789.14, roughly equivalent to six months of groceries for a family of four or a full year of community college tuition for two students).

His employment ended on March 31, 2020. He spent the next three years navigating administrative processes before filing a formal complaint in March 2023 under the D.C. Wage Payment and Collection Law (DCWPCL), alleging two counts of wage theft: one for the unpaid productivity bonus, and one for the shortfall in tuition reimbursement.

What the Settlement Number Will Never Cover

Alexander Zajac spent roughly four years at Finnegan. He started as a Student Associate, grinding through law school while simultaneously billing hours for a firm that built its reputation on airtight intellectual property law. The irony is thick: a firm whose entire business model depends on precise, enforceable promises allegedly made promises to its own employee and then decided those promises didn’t apply.

Think about what it means to bill 2,200 hours in a single year. That is not a statistic. That is approximately 42 hours per week, every week, for 52 weeks, with no vacation. That is missing dinners. That is answering emails at 11 p.m. That is postponing friendships, relationships, and rest because you have been told that your sacrifice has a defined reward structure, and that the firm operates by a code that has been “understood throughout” its halls.

When that reward did not come, Zajac was left to absorb something harder to quantify than $33,789.14: the realization that the system he had been working inside was not operating in good faith. He had done exactly what was asked of him. He finished law school, passed the bar, billed past every threshold, earned grades above B, maintained good standing, received satisfactory performance reviews, and still walked away without what he was owed.

They Burned the Evidence

Zajac alleges that while he was on severance, his original copy of the 2018 Associate offer letter was destroyed. That letter, according to Zajac, did not describe the productivity bonus as discretionary. The version Finnegan presented to the court does describe it as discretionary. The original is gone. Zajac cannot produce it. The appeals court noted explicitly that this destruction allegation means the documentary evidence does not “flatly eliminate” his claims, so the case cannot be thrown out on those grounds.

This is how power operates against people without institutional backing. A missing document becomes a “dispute of word against word.” A junior lawyer, appearing without a paid attorney in his own case (the court documents note he appeared “pro se”), is left arguing against a firm that employs armies of legal professionals, using as his evidence an offer letter that no longer exists. The structural advantage Finnegan holds is not incidental; it is the entire terrain of the fight.

What Zajac experienced is a textbook case of the insider-outsider dynamic that defines elite professional services firms. The firm sets the rules. The firm interprets the rules. The firm keeps the documents. When a dispute arises, the junior employee must reconstruct the promises made to them from memory and custom, while the firm produces whatever paperwork it still holds and calls everything else discretionary. The word “discretionary” is doing enormous, devastating work in this case, and it was Finnegan that wrote it into every document.

There is a specific form of betrayal that comes from being exploited by a system you genuinely believed in. Zajac did not cut corners. He did not clock phantom hours. He played the game exactly as he was told it worked, and the people who set the rules simply changed their interpretation when the bill came due. The $33,789.14 ($33,789.14, enough to cover one year of rent in many U.S. cities) is real. But the damage to any reasonable person’s trust in institutional promises, the cost of years spent in good faith that were met with bad faith, does not appear in any court filing.

Straight From the Court Record. No Spin.

“It was understood throughout the firm that 100 hours over the requirement resulted in a 10% productivity bonus, that 200 hours over the requirement resulted in a 20% productivity bonus, and that 300 hours over the requirement resulted in a 25% productivity bonus. At the end of fiscal year 2019, Mr. Zajac billed over 2200 hours but did not receive a productivity bonus.” — D.C. Court of Appeals, No. 23-CV-0781, summarizing Zajac’s allegations

“Mr. Zajac claimed he received ‘pre-tax’ reimbursement and asserted that ‘[b]ased on customary business practice, “100%” reimbursement means tuition expenses are covered post-tax.’ As a consequence, Zajac alleged he ‘lost no less than $33,789.14 in tuition reimbursement.'” — D.C. Court of Appeals, No. 23-CV-0781, factual background section

“Mr. Zajac asserted that productivity bonuses were mandatory for Associate Attorneys, and the bonus ‘was mentioned in Plaintiff’s offer letter for conversion to a full [A]ssociate’ without any ‘qualification as discretionary,’ though he claimed Finnegan later destroyed his copy of this letter.” — D.C. Court of Appeals, No. 23-CV-0781, summarizing Zajac’s opposition

“We view the offer to reimburse tuition as an enticement made by the firm to encourage Mr. Zajac to accept its offer of employment. And this makes sense—various law firms have created fellowships and programs to attract the candidates that the firm desires.” — D.C. Court of Appeals, No. 23-CV-0781, analysis of tuition reimbursement as a wage

“The documentary evidence does not flatly eliminate Mr. Zajac’s factual allegations. While the letter provides some evidentiary value, we are essentially left at this stage with a final dispute of Mr. Zajac’s word against that of Finnegan’s.” — D.C. Court of Appeals, No. 23-CV-0781, on the destroyed offer letter dispute

“In sum, we conclude that the tuition reimbursement in this case is in fact a wage either as a bonus or fringe benefit because it is a net monetary benefit conferred on Mr. Zajac by reason of his employment. This is not a reimbursement with the sole purpose of making Mr. Zajac whole.” — D.C. Court of Appeals, No. 23-CV-0781, landmark ruling on tuition reimbursement as a wage

This Case Is Bigger Than One Lawyer

Economic Inequality: When the Rules Are Written by the People Who Don’t Have to Follow Them

The Zajac case exposes a structural mechanism that elite professional services firms use to accumulate value at the expense of their own workers. The bonus structure Finnegan allegedly employed gave partners and managing staff enormous flexibility under the label “discretionary,” while junior employees like Zajac invested years of labor under the assumption that defined thresholds meant defined rewards. The word “discretionary” in an offer letter effectively transfers all power over promised compensation to the employer, at zero cost to the employer.

Junior attorneys at elite law firms are among the highest-earning workers in the country, which makes wage theft against them invisible in the public consciousness. But the same structural dynamic, where compensation promises are labeled discretionary and then withheld despite performance being met, plays out across every industry and every income level. If a firm like Finnegan applies this playbook to its own attorneys, consider how casually it gets applied to workers who cannot represent themselves in a D.C. appeals court.

The D.C. Court of Appeals’ ruling carries implications far beyond Zajac’s case. The court held explicitly that tuition reimbursement offered as an employment enticement qualifies as a wage under the D.C. Wage Payment and Collection Law. That is a legal precedent. Every employer in the District that uses education benefits or similar perks to attract candidates now faces heightened accountability: if you promise a benefit to land a hire, that benefit may be legally enforceable as a wage, and withholding it may constitute wage theft.

The case also illustrates what happens to workers who challenge institutional power without institutional backing. Zajac appeared in this litigation “pro se,” meaning without a hired attorney. He was one individual, arguing against a firm that employs hundreds of lawyers and built its reputation on winning legal fights. The appeals court reversed the trial court’s dismissal, but only after Zajac survived multiple rounds of motions, an initial dismissal, a denied motion to amend, and an appeal he argued himself at oral argument. Most workers in similar situations never reach that stage. The system’s cost of entry is itself a deterrent to justice.

Public Health: The Hidden Cost of 2,200-Hour Work Years

The billing requirement at Finnegan’s associate level was 2,000 hours per year. That is not a casual target. The American Bar Association has documented extensively that high billable-hour cultures in law firms correlate directly with elevated rates of depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, and burnout among attorneys. Zajac exceeded even that threshold, billing over 2,200 hours in fiscal year 2019, and then received nothing additional for the surplus labor he delivered.

When workers in high-pressure environments are promised compensation for extraordinary performance and that compensation is withheld, the psychological toll compounds. The labor was already extracted. The cost in time, stress, and health was already paid. The denial of the promised reward does not just represent financial harm; it retroactively reframes every sacrificed hour as exploitation rather than investment. That reframing carries documented psychological consequences, including erosion of trust, increased cynicism, and reduced motivation, that extend well beyond the individual and into the fabric of workplace culture broadly.

Put a Number on It

Who Answers. Who Watches. What You Can Do.

The Firm on the Hook

The case returns to D.C. Superior Court for further proceedings. The D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled that Zajac’s amended complaint states plausible claims of wage theft on both counts and must be heard on its full merits. The firm involved is:

Watchlist: Who Has Jurisdiction Over This Behavior

The Ground-Level Response

If you are a current or former employee of any law firm or professional services organization and believe your bonus or tuition benefits were withheld without justification, document everything now. Save offer letters, email threads, performance reviews, and any written or recorded communication about compensation expectations. The Zajac case demonstrates that destroyed documents become disputes of credibility, and credibility is much harder to fight for than paper. Connect with your local legal aid organization, your state’s labor board, or a workers’ rights nonprofit. Law firm employees are not exempt from wage theft protections, and the Zajac ruling makes clear that courts are willing to hear these cases. Collective action within firms, through unionization drives, worker organizing, or coordinated complaints, changes the power dynamics that allow wage theft to go unchallenged at the individual level.