Our Employment Relations Lawyers Approach Employment Relations Proactively

We assist clients in setting up and maintaining effective employee relations programs designed to minimize the risk of litigation in areas of:

• Designing, documenting, and implementing workplace policies
• Drafting employee handbooks
• HIPAA Compliance
• Plant closing and WARN Act counseling
• Employment contract negotiation and preparation
• Termination counseling
• Harassment and discrimination training
• Workplace violence prevention
• Internal investigations
• Wage and Hour, unemployment, and workers’ compensation counseling
• Employee benefit and executive compensation plans

Even the best employment counseling cannot prevent all disputes from occurring, however. We practice and counsel before EEOC and state and local human rights departments in areas of discrimination based upon race, sex, age, disability, and non-compliance with family and medical leave laws.

Our lawyers have successfully defended state law contract claims related to employee handbooks and claims for wrongful termination, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress alleged to have arisen out of employment termination.

We can represent you in claims regarding:

Our Executive Compensation Lawyers can provide you with a comprehensive suite of employee benefit services

These services include the design, implementation, administration, and termination of employee benefit and executive compensation plans.

The employee benefits plans we create and maintain are designed to attract superior talent, save fees and taxes, reduce health care costs, create employee loyalty, and provide benefits to owner-employees, including:

• Qualified employee retirement plans, such as pension, profit-sharing, 401(k), 457, and 403(b) plans, SEPs, and SIMPLE plans
• Healthcare plans, such as fully insured and self-insured plans, reimbursement plans, and flexible spending and health savings accounts
• Fringe benefit plans, such as severance, dependent care assistance, tuition reimbursement, qualified transportation fringe benefits, and cafeteria plans
• Welfare plans providing health care, disability, and accident benefits, including many
• Severance pay plans
• Executive compensation benefit plans, such as nonqualified deferred compensation, excess benefit, top hat, golden handcuffs, golden parachutes, stock options, phantom stock, and stock appreciation rights

The benefit plans we create for our clients are compliant from the outset. But when a new client brings us a plan that has fallen out of compliance, we take action to correct the operational defects to avoid negative consequences and preserve the benefits of the plan.

We advise, counsel, and inform plan sponsors and participants on the legal aspects of plan administration, the interpretation of plan terms, duties of plan fiduciaries, claims for benefits, discrimination testing, qualified domestic relations orders (“QDROs”), partial terminations, and reporting and disclosure rules.