Corporations shirking responsibility for sexual harassment in the workplace had better watch out for Lisa Bloom. Bloom, daughter of renowned attorney Gloria Allred and co-anchor for Court TV's trial coverage program "Trial Heat," shared her experiences as a litigator and broadcast journalist at the Amos Tuck School of Business on Tuesday as part of the Beacon Capital Partners Leadership Speaker Series.
Specializing in litigation for cases of sexual abuse, harassment and discrimination, Bloom attributed her professional drive to personal experiences as a woman in the workplace.
Recently, she successfully sued a company in a personal harassment suit, and she encouraged other women to do so for themselves and to protect others.
"The reason I did it was that I felt an obligation to younger women," she said.
Bloom stressed that business managers must educate their employees about sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct in the workplace.
Most, if not all, Fortune 500 companies hold mandatory education sessions for their workers, a procedure currently preferred over handing out information packets.
Education is essential because, even when the plaintiff does not win a large amount of money, Bloom said, lawsuits are still extremely costly to a business.
"Education is going to cost you, but it's not going to cost you one million dollars a year," she told an audience of approximately thirty Tuck students.
In addition to emphasizing employee education, Bloom advised business students to act responsibly as soon as a worker files a complaint.
According to Bloom, companies must "come down early, come down hard" and document everything in order to protect the victim as much as possible, which is their legal obligation.
Yet Bloom also emphasized victims' obligations to inform perpetrators that their advances are unwanted.
According to Bloom, 80 percent of women in the workplace report that they have been sexually harassed.
She said that both men and women should develop a plan of action in case they encounter harassment, and victims should report harassment quickly for a better chance of being believed.
"Most sexual harassment escalates because he thinks you liked the initial comments," she said.
Bloom also highlighted several sexual harassment cases she prosecuted.
In one case, she represented an 18-year-old female who entered her family business and was sexually harassed by her uncle. In another case in California, four young women were fired for refusing to wear revealing outfits at the strip club where they served as waitresses.
The women sued the club but eventually dropped the case because of what Bloom called aggressive retaliation tactics of the strip club.
A graduate of UCLA and Yale Law School, Bloom began her career in commercial litigation while performing pro-bono work on the side.
After practicing in New York for five years, she moved to Los Angeles and joined the practice in which Allred was a partner.
Now a Court TV regular, Bloom makes frequent guest appearances on CNN and NBC, discussing and debating high-profile cases in the news.
Bloom also spoke at Tuck's "Ethics in Action" class and served as guest of honor at a reception held by Women in Business on Tuesday.
