McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Every employment decision shapes how your workforce performs – impacting your culture, reputation, and revenue. Our employment lawyers help your business move forward by managing risk across the employee life cycle – from hiring and onboarding to performance management, retention, and separation.

We go beyond reactive advice by partnering with you to anticipate risk. By taking the time to understand your business and your industry, we stay attuned to emerging workplace trends. Our employment lawyers help you address issues early, reducing the likelihood of disputes or regulatory scrutiny that can be costly and disruptive to your operations.

We partner with you to develop workplace policies that limit legal exposure and strengthen culture, help you comply with ever-evolving laws and regulations around the world, and negotiate contracts designed to protect your interests and align incentives across your organization.

To support global workforces, our employment lawyers work together seamlessly from offices worldwide, providing coordinated, cross-border guidance. We advise on issues across the full spectrum of employment law – from day-to-day advice and policy development to C-suite and board advisory, as well as bet-the-company litigation.

When high-stakes disputes arise, we assemble teams with the specific experience required to litigate the claims at issue – including highly specialized and complex matters. This approach has contributed to our strong track record in labor and employment litigation.

Our employment practice supports your organization at every stage of growth. We provide guidance that is grounded in how your business operates, partnering with you to mitigate workforce risk so you can drive your business forward.

The team at McDermott Will & Schulte is highly skilled at advising on employment law topics and complex personnel issues.
– Client Testimonial in Chambers USA

Proactively addressing diversity, gender, and pay equity is a top priority for employers. You look to counsel to be on the pulse of these issues and to help develop plans that are ahead of the curve and protect your organization’s people, culture, and reputation.

Our global employment lawyers counsel industry-leading public and private companies, boards of directors, and senior executives on employment discrimination, internal investigations, and aligning advice with your business objectives. Our approach goes beyond rote legal recitation to provide comprehensive and business-oriented solutions for protecting the organization’s market position and minimizing legal liability, financial loss, and reputational damage.

Bringing decades of management-side experience in pay equity, discrimination, and harassment lawsuits, our employment lawyers combine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) best practices with deep knowledge of anti-discrimination laws to proactively identify concerns within the organization and deliver customized solutions.

If faced with an employment discrimination lawsuit, our litigators have a proven track record of success, from negotiating early settlements that minimize impact to winning favorable verdicts in arbitration and in state and federal courts.

Pay Equity

We help global employers comply with the evolving legal frameworks that govern pay equity. Through confidential pay studies in partnership with trusted experts, our lawyers identify and address pay discrepancies based on gender, race, ethnicity, or other factors before challenges arise.

Our employment and executive compensation teams work together to analyze sector-specific pay data, compensation structures, pay equity laws, and board fiduciary responsibilities to help you protect your business. We partner with organizations to:

• Administer a pay study under attorney-client privilege
• Assess pay disparities
• Review policies and pipeline initiatives to identify root causes
• Develop an action plan based on findings – either by implementing policy, pipeline, culture, and other changes compliant with state and federal requirements, or redesigning compensation structures for compliance, impact, and competitive edge
• Conduct assessments on a global basis considering relevant foreign pay equity laws and reporting requirements

Harassment & Employment Discrimination

We take a proactive approach to help our clients navigate sensitive allegations of workplace harassment and discrimination. Such allegations are becoming increasingly complex to manage, with the rise of such claims being posted directly to social media.

To prevent allegations from arising, our lawyers partner with your in-house legal and human resources teams to evaluate conduct, update policies, provide interactive trainings, and foster a culture of compliance. We work closely with your organization to:

• Conduct harassment prevention training programs for employees across all levels of your organization, as well as offer one-on-one executive leadership training for members of your C-suite and board
• Ensure compliance with state and federal regulations, including the deployment of confidential reporting systems
• Identify potential risks and make informed decisions about allocating compliance resources

If you are faced with a high-stakes harassment or discrimination claim, we work with your in-house teams to respond swiftly and take decisive action, including measures to:

• Conduct an extensive internal investigation and deliver recommendations for corrective action
• Form a special committee of the board to provide necessary independence to the process
• Counsel the board on disclosure obligations to shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders to mitigate risk for shareholder derivative litigation
• Deploy a crisis management plan, including an appropriate public statement

The entire team that I work with are very professional, knowledgeable, thought provoking, and provide the necessary options to ensure we are totally compliant.
– Client Testimonial in Chambers USA

Companies show their commitment to inclusivity by ensuring that they provide proper accommodations for all people. We help companies navigate accessibility laws to create a welcoming and accessible environment for people with disabilities.

From Fortune 100 companies to disability rights organizations, all types of businesses in numerous industries turn to us to help them address their unique challenges under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and related laws. Led by a former deputy assistant attorney general of the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division – who in that position enforced the ADA nationwide – our team has more than 10 lawyers who work in this niche area. Equipped with built-in efficiencies from handling a wide scope of cases for many different clients, we produce the desired results in a cost-effective manner.

Counseling

In addition to advising on day-to-day legal issues, our team develops ADA compliance programs – which include conducting audits, preparing policies and developing training – for companies to address customer complaints involving accessibility issues and to mitigate against litigation risk. This counseling work also includes advising clients on how to design and construct facilities in compliance with building codes and accessibility requirements.

Litigation

Our team has extensive experience handling all types of ADA lawsuits in courts across the country as well as before administrative agencies such as the Florida Commission on Human Relations and California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing. These cases concern virtually every aspect of Title III of the ADA, including barrier removal at facilities, website accessibility, service animals, effective communication, assistive technology, hotel reservations and reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. Comprising the rare combination of plaintiff’s lawyers, defense lawyers and a former high-ranking government official (all in the same specialized field), our team offers clients a unique skill set, substantial experience with high-impact cases and an enviable record of litigation victories.

Trade secrets derive their value from remaining confidential – making employee and executive departures one of the greatest sources of risk. We help you manage that risk through legal and contractual frameworks that control how your trade secrets are shared and used across your organization. When confidentiality is breached, we work to enforce your rights and limit exposure in high-stakes disputes.

With more than 50 trade secret lawyers worldwide, we bring deep knowledge of US and international laws to help you strengthen your competitive advantage across borders. These issues rarely stay in one lane – they surface in hiring decisions, executive departures, business transactions, data breaches, and beyond. We work across practice areas, from IP and employment to transactions and cybersecurity, to provide integrated support.

We help you protect proprietary business information and navigate restrictive covenant and employee mobility issues through strategic counseling, investigations, enforcement actions, and disputes. Our lawyers guide you through trade secret risk at critical moments – when you hire talent, transition key personnel, and negotiate business transactions.

When disputes arise, we develop enforcement and defense strategies designed to protect your business and reputation. We litigate trade secret, unfair competition, breach of contract, and fiduciary duty claims, including claims under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) and the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). Our lawyers represent clients in trade secret litigation before US and international courts and arbitration forums.

If allegations involve criminal conduct, disputes can escalate into government enforcement actions. We defend against such actions under US law, including matters involving the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Unlike other forms of intellectual property, trade secrets must be actively managed to remain confidential. Our trade secret lawyers partner with you to protect, enforce, and defend the proprietary information that makes your business harder to compete with. By advising you on trade secret matters across jurisdictions, we help you sustain a critical competitive advantage.

[The firm] handle[s] complex and sophisticated matters with great creative thinking and responsiveness.
– Client Testimonial in Chambers USA

During, and after, your most important transactions, your company needs proactive counsel to minimize legal liability and protect your business interests. Our global employment team guides public and private companies across all industries through complex employment law and labor issues associated with M&A deals and other high-value transactions.

We leverage deep knowledge of emerging litigation trends and new employment laws – including evolving regulations and state wage-and-hour issues – to help you identify and mitigate legal risk during your buy-side and sell-side transactions.

Our full-service employment team works closely with lawyers in our market-leading corporate and transactional practice at the outset of a deal to ensure a smooth transition. With a thorough understanding of market practices and trends, our employment and executive contracts lawyers are well-positioned to:

• Conduct due diligence reviews to identify risks and develop solutions to mitigate those risks
• Negotiate executive employment and compensation agreements
• Provide counsel on sensitive personnel issues
• Coordinate with our corporate and transactional practice on definitive deal documents and purchase agreements
• Advise on post-acquisition employee integration

Our areas of focus

• Counsel on domestic and global employment issues involved in M&A deals and other transactions, divestitures, carve-outs, spin-offs, corporate reorganizations, post-acquisition integrations, and outsourcings
• Develop tools to manage the various human resources (HR) aspects of a deal cycle, including domestic and global due diligence lists, transaction agreement matrices, HR step plans, and implementation labor maps
• Partner with in-house legal and HR teams to update internal policies and protocols after a merger or acquisition, ensuring compliance with ever-evolving state and federal employment regulations
• Advise companies that are expanding into new jurisdictions on appropriate employment structures and onboarding requirements
• Conduct post-deal trainings for employees at all levels of an organization, including customizable programs for board members, C-suites and other executives, legal teams, and staff
• Defend clients in government investigations and compliance audits related to the transaction, providing effective plans to minimize the investigation’s scope, evaluate the position, and deploy a response
• Conduct extensive internal investigations and, when appropriate, guide clients on corrective action and process improvements
• Advise employers and executives in negotiating complex employment and compensation agreements and arrangements, including employment agreements, equity agreements, bonus arrangements, and commission plans
• Counsel clients on corporate reorganizations, employee transfers, reductions in force, and WARN Act compliance