Seeking "best practices" thoughts. I have been working for a government agency for about 2.5 years. Had a career for a decade or so outside of law in policy-adjacent filed and left for better location, work-life balance, blah blah. This is relevant because I feel like I'm in a friggin' clown car and need people to talk sense into me and provide some advice who aren't these lifers with zero perspective by whom I'm surrounded.
So. My boss (chief legal) has zero managerial capacity; truly I have never seen anything like it. I am also convinced he's trying to sideline me because, despite consistently asking for substantive work in the issues we are tasked with, he routes admin stuff to me constantly and only gives actual work to two other lawyers, who lose case after case. All other attorneys at this agency appear to be running back-up. It is a mess.
This leads to current issue: I was recently placed in charge of an HR complaint, despite having zero background or training in HR. I come to see said complaint is out of a division run by a guy who sent me a sexually explicit text message, soliciting me for sex, a few months ago, because he and his partner have an "open relationship" and he found me "SUPER HOT." I never responded to the text because it was like, WTF. Never gave this man any indication I was interested in him, never saw him beyond 4-5 times at work and literally TWICE outside of work at work "team-building" functions.
Anyway, I now see he's been CC'd on the overall HR complaint by some employee of his - I do not think he has direct supervisory control over this person, but as I say, it's his unit this is coming out of.
I personally do not think I should be representing the agency on this issue for multiple reasons:
- I don't do HR/employment law - and this feels like the sort of BS thing my boss has given me in case it blows up in our face
- The complainant alleges that Legal has been slow in review (this process began over a year ago - I was only brought in a week ago to represent us) of the underlying complaint. This is undoubtedly true - I'm assuming there are emails to back this up - as the person to whom it was initially assigned is often delayed by months in getting back to people. I don't want to take the fall for Legal if this goes south. And I think it's gonna go south.
- The appearance of conflict of interest. If the complainant has a legitimate allegation - and I think they do - I do not want to have my integrity/ethics compromised where I was defending an agency where the complainant's divisional chief sent the lawyer in charge (ie, me) inappropriate text messages.
I didn't report the text messages the first time around because I had never worked with the sender/divisional chief, and he didn't have any supervisory control over me. So, while inappropriate and gross and unwanted, I didn't see how it amounted to sexual harassment. Given his position as divisional head over the complainant's department, I now feel like perhaps this is an issue.
Thoughts?
I was going to contact my boss tomorrow. Initially I was considering a conversation, where I would show the text messages and lay out my concerns, but right now I'm strongly leaning towards sending an email instead so that there is an immediate paper trail and nothing can be twisted. My biggest concern is that the divisional chief (the sexter) likely has little to do with this particular case, so maybe my concerns are baseless. BUT, he's still looped into every correspondence and I'm still representing this man's incredibly toxic division - multiple people have said his group is a very toxic one to work in, which also puts the complaint in context. I'll stop rambling.