A substantial portion of our employment practice is devoted to counseling clients in order to avoid expensive and time-consuming litigation. Our attorneys assist clients in developing and implementing sound strategies for administering personnel relationships in a way that seeks to identify potential problems before they become disputes and lawsuits. We have developed the following effective strategies to help employers fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations:

• Auditing employment policies, applications, evaluation forms, and wage and hour classifications to ensure compliance with laws and regulations.
• Advising employers on formulating, communicating and implementing sound and defensible disciplinary and discharge decisions.
• Conducting training programs to acquaint supervisors with key legal issues related to internal labor relations audits, equal employment opportunity, sexual harassment and union avoidance, along with routine follow-up and updates on new labor and employment law developments.
• Support for internal investigations of alleged sexual harassment and other employee misconduct, and guidance for employers when discipline or discharge is necessary.
• Drafting employee handbooks and personnel policies, substance abuse policies, discretionary bonus and retention bonus arrangements, employee separation and severance agreements, and other critical employment-related documents.
• Assisting employers with preparing and implementing ERISA-covered occupational injury benefit plans as an alternative to statutory workers’ compensation for their Texas employees.
• Assisting employers with implementing the elements of workforce reductions, including selection of employees for layoff, notification requirements, severance benefits, and separation programs with enforceable releases of potential employee claims.
• Providing counsel on the ramifications and proper handling of labor, employment and benefits law issues in business sales, mergers and acquisitions.
• Developing employer procedures to protect confidential information, competitive advantages and goodwill from harm by current and former employees.