Yeah, I can now see why the whole thing is basically the groundwork for a legal fight.

That said she’s an amateur “lawyer” facing pros so the situation is stacked against her, plus she’s very nervous because she’s young and taking it personally, none of which are good for her side of the outcome.

It is extremelly unlikelly that a nervous amateur with a massive stake on the outcome will manage to get anything useful in a legal sense from a professional lawyer for whom the whole thing is just a job.

This might be one of those situations were the right strategy is to refuse to discuss it with the company’s legal team without your own legal advice present, or at least getting some legal advice upfront about what to get from them (say, documentation they’re obligated to provide).

As with everything, not being the “easy pickings” increases your chance that they’ll just give in and pay up simply because it’s not worth the risk - it’s a lot better to pay somebody and have her sign a non-disclosure agreement on the whole thing than risking it going to court, their claims of “for cause” being trashed in a way that affects the entire strategy for laying all those people off and other ex-employees use that to get summary judgements against them or similar.

Amateur trying to get them to admit she’s not really being laid off with cause probably counts as “easy pickings” for the lawyer on the other side.

If there’s something life has taught me (in a very painful way) is to lawyer-up as soon as there are legal implications (fortunatelly, over here firing “for cause” - i.e. laying off - has quite a higher standard of proof for the company and can’t just be on them making claims of underperformance). Mind you, she was there for a short while, so it’s maybe not worth the legal costs.