Manatt’s Deborah Kelly, a partner in the employment and labor group, appeared on the first episode of the Real Washington podcast to speak about the #MeToo movement and incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Kelly said it is important for companies to give their employees thorough sexual harassment prevention training and prevent incidents from happening in the first place.
“We want to behave in a way that we never get to a trial,” she said. “And if an allegation is filed against us, we can kill it quickly because we’ve done the right thing all along.”
She also noted that sexual harassment claims have increased for the first time in a decade, according to figures released by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—not because of an increase in harassment incidents in recent years, but rather because “there’s safety in numbers and people who would otherwise be silent are coming forward.”
Watch the full podcast here.