Over the last decade, Margaret Wong has been named among the best lawyers in America.

Listed as one of the most influential women in Ohio, she's a philanthropist, political player and relentless promoter of women's issues.

She is also on a state Supreme Court task force on racial equality.

But now the lawyer best known for helping people of all races and ethnic groups stay in the United States is in the centre of a lawsuit that claims she is a racist bigot.

At least four ex-employees say Wong, a Chinese immigrant routinely disparaged the ethnic backgrounds of her workers and her clients.

The most common complaint was that Wong said whites were slow and lazy - unlike the Chinese, whom Wong regarded as the epitome of diligence and intellect.

Their claims were filed in sworn testimony and court papers last week.

Blacks, Arabs, Russians, Indians, Filipinos and other ethnic groups also suffered Wong's judgment, her former colleagues say in court papers.

"If she was a white man saying a lot of this stuff, it would be shocking," said Michael Sharon, a lawyer who worked with Wong for 16 years before leaving her firm in 2000.

Wong describes the accusations as shocking, and untrue.

She denies ever saying whites are inferior to Chinese.

However, she hesitates to say her former employees are lying, reported the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

In a firm with clients from all over the world, differences of culture and custom inevitably are discussed, and Wong says some of her words may have been misconstrued. "Why would I be so stupid as to kill my own law practice" Wong said.

The lawsuits threaten to stain what has otherwise been an American success story.

Born in 1950 in Hong Kong, Margaret Wong was the child of a Mainland Chinese couple who fled the political repression and civil war caused by the Communist takeover of China.

In the late 1960s, she came to the United States on a student visa, with little money and big dreams. She worked as a waitress to pay her own way through college and law school. In light of a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, she became one of the first non-U.S. citizens licensed to practice law in New York and Ohio.

After law school, she struggled to get ahead in a legal community that was still mostly white and mostly male. So she bought a desk for US$25 and set up her own practice.

Today, Margaret Wong & Associates has a staff of 40.

Wong just opened a second office in Columbus, and she's considering another one in New York. She has gained national prominence running Cleveland's largest law firm, and she's not afraid to call herself a "great lawyer."

Wong is also known for her charity work and her influential connections. She serves on the board of University Hospitals. Two years ago, she attended the Democratic National Convention as an alternate delegate.

Wong received the highly coveted Ellis Island Medal of Honor in May 1998 for her outstanding achievements and contributions to the United States.

Some of her co-workers however have painted a different portrait about Wong.

Michael Sharon, who worked with Wong for 16 years and his law partner, Aniko Kalnoki, have accused Wong of asking them to behave unethically when they worked at Wong's firm, a charge Wong also has denied.

In her deposition, Kalnoki said Wong asked her to embellish or "create facts" to win clients work or political visas.

Sharon testified that Wong asked him to charge extra fees to clients above the original contract terms.

Former clients made similar claims in two complaints against Wong to the Ohio Supreme Court, according to one deposition.

Another ex-employee paralegal Kathleen Ehrbar says Wong fired her last year because she is white and more than 40 years old.

Her allegations are laid out in a race and age-discrimination lawsuit against Wong in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

In the court papers, Wong's ex-employees describe her office as a racial pressure cooker and Wong as a sometimes volatile taskmaster.

Ehrbar said staff discussions about different cultures could sometimes degenerate into stereotyping.

In one instance, a female Lebanese lawyer mentioned how some Middle Eastern men were unaccustomed to dealing with professional women. Then Wong said Arab men couldn't be trusted, according to Ehrbar's deposition.

Ehrbar's legal case focuses mainly on her claims that Wong disparaged whites and gave special treatment to Chinese workers. Ehrbar said Chinese paralegals could brush aside work they didn't want, take longer vacations and dress more casually.

"It just fed into the hostility, the pervasive environment that somehow non-Chinese were inferior," Ehrbar said.

Wong denies relaxing the rules for Chinese workers or treating Ehrbar differently.

Similar accusations of prejudice were raised two years ago by Sharon, Kalnoki, a third lawyer and another paralegal, all of whom Wong sued after they left her firm.

In a counterclaim, they said Wong's racial stereotyping made working with her "intolerable."

Wong's suit and the counterclaim were dropped last year.

"As an immigration-law firm, we saw people from literally all over the world, and there were a number of occasions when she would make remarks which I considered to be improper, or at least politically incorrect," Sharon said in a deposition last September.

"On numerous occasions, she [Wong] had indicated that Caucasians are not smart, and they are slow; Asians are fast, Asians are smart," said Kalnoki, who worked with Wong for eight years.

But Kalnoki also testified that Wong made nasty comments about some Asian groups, too - specifically, Filipinos, Koreans and Japanese.

And Sharon said he heard Wong make insulting generalizations about Indians, Africans, Arabs and Latinos.

Wong suggested her accusers may be motivated by personal grievances or professional jealousy: the lawyers who testified against her are now her competitors in immigration law.

Wong's downtown office in Cleveland is among the most diverse workplaces in the city, with employees from Asia, the Middle East, South America and Eastern Europe.

She has only about a half-dozen lawyers, with paralegals, law students and other assorted helpers pushing along hundreds of visa applications. All told, they speak about 20 languages.

"I came from Hong Kong with nothing, and I built this practice," Wong said. "I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I hire international workers." Wong routinely steers clients to staffers with similar backgrounds, for reasons of both language and culture.

Wong said she encourages employees to talk to each other about their cases and clients and the ways legal and cultural issues can collide.

"You have to be aware of the cultural differences in order to do your job," said Jennifer Peyton, an associate at Wong's firm who is defending her against the discrimination suit. Peyton, who has worked for Wong for two years, said she doesn't recognize the hostile workplace described in the suits.

She and others in the office seem to regard Wong as a motherly presence, and Wong has returned the sentiment: Over the past two years, she has taken her staff on vacations to Mexico and Las Vegas.

The suit against Wong is scheduled for trial in January, though Wong has asked that it be dismissed.

Even if Wong said everything of which she's accused, her comments were, "at worst, politically incorrect statements" that can't justify a discrimination claim, Wong's lawyers said.