In almost twenty years of litigating and investigating high-drama harassment matters, I've learned that not all harassers are created equally. There is a particular kind of case that keeps finding its way to me in which the person doing the harassing is a rainmaker. You know the type: the equity partner, the C-suite exec, the top producer who brings in an outsized share of the revenue and, with it, an outsized share of the power.
And that imbalance leads to an uncomfortable truth. When a rank-and-file employee behaves badly, an employer can usually discipline or fire the bad actor and move on. When a rainmaker behaves badly, that same organization starts doing math: weighing the misconduct against millions in billings, potential rebrand costs, marquee client relationships, and its own reputation.
Guess who loses that math equation? Almost always, it's the person who was harmed. That's why attorneys need to modify our strategy when representing our clients in these high-stakes cases.
Who Handles Complaints About the Boss?
The entire purpose of a reporting system is that you can go "up the chain" of command to complain. But what happens when the person at the top of the chain is the harasser?
HR exists, in theory, to take your complaint and investigate it impartially. In reality, HR answers to leadership...and the rainmaker often is leadership. As a result, HR has a powerful financial incentive to doubt you, downplay the incident, or quietly slide your complaint into a drawer where it will never see daylight. That's how a victim ends up genuinely stuck: still working alongside their harasser, unable to escalate without tipping off the very executives protecting the wrongdoer and realizing that the person being treated like the problem is the victim, not the bad actor.
The stakes rise even higher at publicly traded companies, where a rainmaker's sudden exit could shake stock prices and trigger awkward disclosures to investors and regulators. Boards at public companies can be especially squeamish about removing a high-value executive, terrified of signaling instability to the market. This fear cranks up the pressure on victims to stay quiet or slip out the back door.
High Power Means High Liability
Now for some good news. The law actually gives victims more leverage in these cases, not less—and in states like Illinois, that leverage has teeth. The law holds supervisors to more stringent standards than co-workers or subordinates, and rainmakers almost always hold supervisory authority.
Under Title VII (i.e., federal law), an employer is held to a stricter standard of liability when the harasser is a supervisor rather than a peer. If that supervisor's harassment culminates in a tangible employment action, like a demotion, termination, or passed-over promotion, the employer can be held strictly or vicariously liable.
The Illinois Advantage
Life is even better in Illinois. Leverage is stronger under the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA), which reaches further than federal law in several key ways:
The IHRA applies to employers of every size and covers a broad range of protected characteristics.
Illinois employers are required to provide annual sexual harassment prevention training to all employees.
Under the IHRA, an employer is strictly liable for harassment by a supervisor—period.
And here's where Illinois law really tilts the field in the victim's favor. There's no "tangible employment action" requirement and no chance for employers to escape liability by claiming they had good policies that the employee failed to use.
In other words, the IHRA gives victims an easier standard than federal law. If the harasser is a supervisor, the employer is on the hook. Herein lies the irony: a firm that looks the other way because its harasser "brings in business" exposes itself to more liability precisely because that harasser holds a supervisory title.
Guess Who Ends Up Leaving? The Wrong Person.
Despite all the legal protections, the real-world ending is depressingly predictable: the victim usually leaves, while the rainmaker rarely does.
Faced with a choice between the executive generating revenue and the employee reporting misconduct, employers too often decide—sometimes explicitly, but more often through sheer inertia—that the revenue is irreplaceable, and the complainant is expendable. The victim gets passed over, iced out, "restructured" out of their role, or simply made so miserable that quitting feels like the only way to breathe again. Meanwhile, the harasser keeps their office, their clients, and their executive standing.
That's the defining injustice of rainmaker harassment, and I've watched it play out more times than I can count. The more powerful and profitable the harasser, the more likely it is that the wronged party, not the wrongdoer, pays the price.
However, here's the thing worth remembering: those same disclosure duties and governance obligations can cut the other way. They give victims and their advocates significant leverage when leadership tries to shield a rainmaker instead of doing what the law plainly requires. Being harassed by a rainmaker can feel like being trapped in a system built to protect everyone but you. It isn't. The law recognizes this power imbalance for exactly what it is—and so do attorneys like me. Even if your harasser is paying the bills, there can be a way forward.
