Employment Law & Employee Benefits

Managing your relationship with executives, employees, and independent contractors

Business owners face many obstacles in determining their employment needs, and must manage different strategies for employees and independent contractors. There are numerous state and federal laws that govern the employment relationship. Compliance with these complex laws can be difficult without experienced counsel to help you take appropriate and practical actions.

Our focus on the employment relationship allows us to offer highly effective counsel and advocacy on:

• Employment Law

  – From hiring your first employee to drafting policies that foster productivity and positive relations, we advise our clients on all aspects of the employer/employee relationship.

  To that end, we consult on matters related to:

  • Employee classification
  • Hiring, firing, and background checks
  • Severance agreements, noncompete agreements and other restrictive covenants
  • State wage and hour laws and FLSA
  • Paid and unpaid leave
  • Separation pay
  • Releases
  • Non-compete agreements
  • Invention assignments
  • Non-solicitation agreements and provisions
  • Independent contractors
  • Commission agreements
  • Other employment matters

• Training – Our attorneys are available to train managers and staff in numerous areas.  Our training includes 1H training, 4-hour workshops and 3-day retreats.  Some of our most popular trainings are:
  • Hiring Avatars and Best Practices
  • Termination Best Practices
  • How to Properly Conduct Internal Investigations
  • Employee Handbooks – What Should be Included and How to Leverage it to Advantage Your Company
  • Closing Communication Gaps – Culture, Geography and More
  • Culture Improvement – Does Your Culture Lead to Lawsuits, Distrust and Toxicity
  • Managers and Policies – Evenahandedness, Discrimination or Something Else?

• Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation – Employee Loyalty and retention are becoming more challenging and expensive.   Is your company properly using incentive plans, employee benefits and executive compensation to its advantage?   Is your company in a state that requires employees to save for retirement?  Does your company have an overfunded defined benefit plan and does it need to avoid a 90% excise tax on the overfunding?  Our attorneys can help you design plans that are the right fit for your organization and can help you take appropriate action to avoid excise taxes.Some of the plans where we can lend our expertise include:
  • Defined benefit plans
  • Defined contribution plans 
  • Long-term incentive plans
  • Phantom stock, restricted stock units and option plans
  • Bonus plans and protocols
  • Deferred compensation plans
  • Impact of IRC § 409A
  • Change of Control
  • And more