TITLE FIGHT - Women in-house attorneys must strongly advocate for themselves to overcome workplace biases, according to panelists at a recent webinar hosted by the advocacy platform The Fourth Floor. As Law.com’s Hugo Guzman reports, women often end up with the responsibilities of running the department but without the title. Beatryx Epps Washington said that’s what happened to her in 2015. She was serving as associate general counsel at the supplements manufacturer LifeVantage when the company eliminated its GC position. “All of the duties you would think of as being performed by general counsel, I was there doing those things,” Washington said. ”But I still didn’t have the [general counsel] title.” Later, after the company revived the GC position but didn’t promote Washington, she said she put her foot down. After confronting an executive, being promoted to SVP for legal affairs and then fighting for a salary increase, Washington finally claimed the GC title in 2017. “One of the things that we as women in particular are told is, ‘You don’t have executive presence,’ or, ‘You’re not prepared to be an executive,’” Washington said. “We have to get away from that.” LifeVantage did not respond to a request for comment.

ON THE RADAR  - Block Inc., the fintech business formerly known as Square, its CEO Jack Dorsey and its CFO Amrita Ahuja were slapped with a securities class action Tuesday in New York Southern District Court in relation to a 2022 data breach. The court action, filed by Glancy Prongay & Murray and other counsel, accuses the defendants of failing to disclose that Block lacked adequate protocols restricting access to customer sensitive information and that a former employee was able to download certain reports of Block’s subsidiary, Cash App Investing. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 1:22-cv-08636, Esposito v. Block, Inc. et al. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com. 

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