EMPLOYMENT LITIGATION & DISPUTE RESOLUTION. We regularly represent employers in the full range of employment issues, including joint employer issues. We litigate at all levels, including individual, collective, and class actions, from administrative proceedings to the highest courts in the jurisdiction. Our cross-practice Business Protection team advises claimants on unlawful team moves and defendants on lawful recruitment exercises, including at the pre-action stage, helping our clients take quick, decisive action to protect their business.

EMPLOYMENT COUNSELING. Clients trust our advice on all areas of employment law across multiple jurisdictions. Our experience includes advising on the recruitment of employees, management of employees during employment (e.g., grievance or disciplinary matters), developing and implementing a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program (DE&I) and responding to DE&I-related issues, together with wage and hour issues, whistleblowing, data protection issues, the drafting and enforcement of restrictive covenants and other post-termination obligations of employees, individual and collective consultation for redundancy exercises and business transfers, and dismissals, terminations, and severance agreements.

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS, PENSIONS AND OTHER RETIREMENT ARRANGEMENTS. We assist clients with the full range of work relating to retirement, pension, health and welfare arrangements including plan design, implementation, restructuring and closure, funding, de-risking and the investment of plan assets. We help clients the world over navigate the myriad regulatory environments in which they may find themselves. Our broad and diversified global practice is capable of servicing all of the employee benefit needs of our clients.

ERISA AND PENSIONS LITIGATION. Companies and pension fund trustees turn to us for representation before government agencies, employment and other courts on retirement plan, pension and other benefit-related issues, in addition to alternative dispute resolutions and avoiding litigation. Our lawyers also have deep experience in pension investment-related litigation, including claims of breach of fiduciary duty, ERISA “stock drop” claims, retiree welfare benefit claims, and employee benefit claims asserted by nonemployees.

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND EQUITY & INCENTIVE PLANS. We advise clients on the many laws and regulations that apply to executive compensation, as well as broad-based equity and incentive plans in multiple jurisdictions. We assist employers in the coordination of legal advice that may be applicable to a single arrangement that operates in many different jurisdictions, as well as advising on the full range of issues affecting restricted stock and restricted-stock unit plans or long-term incentive plans, stock option plans, stock purchase plans, stock appreciation rights and phantom plans, equity-based incentive plans, and deferred cash bonus arrangements.

Our Pensions Investment and ERISA Fiduciary practices focus on the investment of pension and other retirement plan assets, as well as the structuring and operation of complex institutional investment funds and products, advising fund managers, banks, pension fund trustees and other fiduciaries on the legal aspects of investments and transactions, and advising on compliance, enforcement and regulatory matters applicable to them. We bring together lawyers with specialist skills in pensions law, derivatives, funds, bulk annuity policies, financial services regulation, and tax, each of whom are accustomed to working together on these projects.

We have the agility, on-the-ground experience and dedicated resources needed to help clients organize, manage, monitor, and anticipate the movement of their people around the globe. Our Global Mobility & Migration lawyers handle applications for visas and other work authorizations in worldwide jurisdictions and use sophisticated software to ensure that visa filings occur on time. We help audit clients’ internal processes for immigration compliance and develop remediation plans for both regulatory compliance and cost optimization. We also advise on the impact M&A and other transactions have on visa status as well as advising companies entering new markets on their hiring strategy in the new locale.