Recent local and national events should have served as important reminders to businesses of all shapes and sizes of the vital and necessary role effective employee policies and procedures play in the protection and success of those businesses. Sexual harassment and employee discrimination are serious matters that can forever impact the employee’s life while, at the same time, irreversibly damage a business. On one hand, employees must know their rights under the law and understand the avenues available to them to report impermissible conduct and to receive fair compensation when their employment rights have been violated. Likewise, employers must understand the obligations imposed upon them by state and federal employment laws and proactively cultivate an inclusive, compliant, and competitively successful workplace environment.Our lawyers are uniquely positioned to help both employees and employers alike in all facets of labor and employment law and human resources. We bring nearly twenty years of broad-based experience in these areas to provide our clients with day-to-day advice on how to handle every aspect of employee hiring, promotion, and termination and to implement best practices for handling personnel issues and compliance with local, state, and federal laws. We prepare employee handbooks, policies and procedures manuals, and personnel forms; all of which form the basis of establishing a workplace culture that demands respect, transparency, and compliance. We work with management on implementing in-house HR departments and programs and help employers properly communicate with their employees to help protect our clients from unnecessary and costly litigation.
Our day-to-day employment law services include the following areas:
• Employee Hiring and Termination
• Internal Investigations
• Harassment and Discrimination Advice
• Drafting or Revising of Employee Policy and Procedure Manuals
• Employee Training Programs
• Employment Contracts
• Non-Compete and/or Non-Disclosure Agreements
• Severance Agreements
• Separation Agreements
• Consulting Agreements
• Maintain and Review Other Business Policies and Procedures
• Education on Maintenance of Employee Files
• Document Employee Performance
With the costs of legal and HR fees soaring to all-time highs, we understand that businesses are too often reluctant to call upon outside counsel or consultants for fear of uncertain and excessive bills. We set out to find a way to encourage our clients to contact us more regularly, to involve us before an issue becomes a problem, and to depend upon our extensive experience in labor, employment, and human resource law.
With this in mind, we offer a flexible approach to client service; an approach in which the client can select the level of HR services they require and can afford based upon each client’s own needs and financial capabilities. We are excited to offer a unique approach whereby the client engages us on an agreed-upon fixed monthly fee to serve as the client’s outsourced HR Director. While there is a handful of HR consulting firms, those consultants are not lawyers and cannot provide the level of comfort that comes with sound, experienced legal advice. In fact, we know of no other law firm in the Gulf South wiling to offer this extensive bundle of services for a fixed fee rate. At the end of the day, this approach encourages businesses to use and rely on us as their “inside” counsel on a regular basis while, at the same time, provides the client with a fixed cost that that it can properly budget without having to worry about surprising and unexpected HR legal issues. Of course, our clients may still engage us on a project-by-project basis for a fixed fee or on per hour basis if that approach works best.
In short, we can serve as the client’s HR Director. We would only be a phone call away. Our HR outsourcing services include legal and strategic advice in the following employment areas:
• Harassment and Discrimination Advice
• Employee Hiring and Termination
• Internal Investigations
• Wage and Tips Advice
• Bi-Annual Review of Employee Policy and Procedure Manual
• Employee Training Program
• Advice on State and Federal Poster Publication Requirements
• Preparation and Review of Employment Contract
• Preparation and Review of Severance Agreement
• Preparation and Review of Separation Agreement
• Education on Maintenance of Employee Files
• Respond to Demand Letters
• Education on Documentation of Employee Performance
• Other Employment Services
If and when litigation is required, our lawyers stand ready to represent both employees and employers in individual and class action litigation in our state and federal courts.
Our employment law litigation experience includes matters relating to:
• Prosecution and defense of employment litigation claims
• Prosecution and defense of unfair trade practice claims
• All types of discrimination and harassment claims
• Protection of trade secrets and proprietary, confidential information
• Enforcement of employment-related agreements including non-compete agreements and non-disclosure agreements
• Whistleblower and retaliation claims
• Wage and overtime issues under the Fair Labor Standards Act
