 Following her second year , she gained a job as a summer associate with the prominent New York law firm Paul , Weiss , Rifkind , Wharton & Garrison . By her own later evaluation , her performance there was lacking . She did not receive an offer for a full @-@ time position , an experience that she later described as a " kick in the teeth " and one that would bother her for years . In her third year , she filed a formal complaint against the established Washington , D.C. , law firm of Shaw , Pittman , Potts & Trowbridge for suggesting during a recruiting dinner that she was at Yale only via affirmative action . Sotomayor refused to be interviewed by the firm further and filed her complaint with a faculty – student tribunal , which ruled in her favor . Her action triggered a campus @-@ wide debate , and news of the firm 's subsequent December 1978 apology made the Washington Post . 
