The #MeToo Lawyer Fighting for Women in the Workplace

In its early days, #MeToo looked like mostly a celebrity movement. Tina Tchen, head of the Chicago office of white-shoe law firm Buckley Sandler LLP, wanted to expand it beyond Hollywood. “When people were first coming forward with their stories, they were getting threatened with legal action,” she says. “And the fastest way to make sure that someone isn’t getting bullied by a lawyer for someone rich and powerful is to make sure that person has a lawyer, too.”

Tchen visited Michelle Kydd Lee, chief of innovation at Creative Artists Agency, who was already involved with what would become Time’s Up, the antiharassment movement with starry backers such as Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon. After brainstorming with Lee, Tchen pitched the National Women’s Law Center on the idea of administering a pool of money to help victims defray legal expenses. And that was that: The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund (TULDF), the group’s flagship initiative, was born.