BELOW THE BAR

‘Kill Her by Anal Penetration’—Lawyers’ Vile Emails Exposed

The New York Post obtained exchanges between two prominent attorneys rife with sexist, racist, and homophobic language.

The New York Post has exposed a raft of emails between a pair of powerhouse attorneys who led an exodus from Los Angeles-based mega-firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith last month, in which the pair referred to women as “cunts,” Black people as “savages,” a colleague as a “f*g”—and even a judge as “sugar tits.”

Neither John Barber nor Jeff Ranen, the former Lewis Brisbois partners, immediately responded to phone calls from The Daily Beast.

The messages the Post published include numerous other slurs, ranging from “fudgepacker” to the n-word, and included numerous crude jabs at fellow employees of their old firm.

“Kill her by anal penetration,” Barber wrote to Ranen regarding another attorney’s request for overtime.

In the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the duo—who formed their own firm in May with more than 140 fellow Lewis Brisbois defectors—shared racist reminiscences of the 1992 riots following the LAPD beating of Rodney King.

“I can’t even imagine what it was like living in Larchmont in 1992 when the savages decimated Koreatown,” wrote Ranen.

Barber responded with what he apparently considered a humorous anecdote.

“As buildings burned within a mile or so that night, we had a party, got wasted, and yelled inappropriate things from the balcony,” he replied.

The Post also reported reviewing multiple messages containing the slur “f**got,” and one in which Ranen said “gypsy”—an archaic and sometimes offensive term for Romani people—was his “new word to describe about half of the minorities in California.”

Lewis Brisbois, which has offices in 52 states nationwide, told the Post it discovered the correspondence while investigating a complaint against the pair following their exit. It described its investigation as ongoing.

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William BreddermanSenior Researcher

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