Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Aaron Gillett

Partner · Mergers and Acquisitions

Ada Dolph

With nearly 20 years of experience as a labor and employment litigator with Seyfarth Shaw, Ada is a trusted advisor to clients in the airline, retail, healthcare and manufacturing industries. Her practice focuses on advice and counsel and innovative litigation involving: - complex procedural defenses including: preemption of state law claims under ERISA, Railway Labor Act, Airline Deregulation Act, Federal Aviation Act, and the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance Act (SGLIA); Article III and statutory standing; statute of limitations; and administrative exhaustion requirements, among others - Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) claims, prevailing as lead counsel in the first BIPA case to be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit - whistleblower claims under state law, AIR21, Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley - discrimination claims in state and federal jurisdictions across the country, including under Title VII, ADA, Section 1981, and the ADEA, and their state law counterparts, including systemic actions brought by the EEOC - ERISA single, multi-plaintiff and class action matters involving denial of health, disability, life, pension and 401(k) benefits, including defense of high profile “stock drop,” retiree medical and 401(k fee class actions Her class action experience includes unique procedural issues including sustaining removal of cases to federal court on preemption and Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) grounds, successfully opposing a named plaintiff-intervenor, successfully petitioning for Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f) review of class certification, obtaining appellate CAFA review and reversal of a district court remand order, defeating and narrowing class certification, and negotiating and overseeing settlements in classes of up to 160,000 class members. In 2019, her unique legal strategy in a a commercial airline matter was recognized for innovation by The Financial Times. Ada co-chairs the firm's Air and Rail specialty team, and am a member of its ERISA and Employee Benefits Litigation practice group, Whistleblower team and Health Care and Provider Fraud team. · Employment Law

Adam Greetis

Partner · Employee Benefits

Adam Lasky

Partner, National Co-Chair, Government Contracts · Government Contracts

Alexander Passantino

Mr. Passantino is Vice Chair of the firm’s Government Relations Practice Group and a Co-Chair of the firm’s Wage and Hour Litigation Practice Group. Mr. Passantino, the former Acting Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, focuses his practice on all aspects of wage and hour law, including advising employers on federal and state wage and hour compliance issues, auditing payroll and employee classification practices, representing employers before the U.S. Department of Labor, and defending class and collective action litigation. In his national practice, Mr. Passantino provides day-to-day advice and assistance to employers in their efforts to comply with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the state laws that require employers to pay overtime and minimum wages to their employees. In addition, Mr. Passantino provides guidance and counseling to government contractors who are subject to the Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act. He advises clients on implementing compliance programs, auditing and correcting wage and hour issues, and responding to the ever-changing wage and hour legal landscape. Mr. Passantino has also defended numerous wage and hour lawsuits, including both individual claims and class and collective actions. Mr. Passantino is active in the hospitality, construction, retail, financial services, and energy industries, and regularly assists trade associations and individual employers in those industries with public policy, legislative, regulatory, and administrative issues. He has testified before a number of congressional committees, including the House Committee on Education and Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is a frequent speaker on wage and hour issues, at conferences, webinars, and client-specific training sessions. Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Passantino served as the Deputy and Acting Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WHD) from 2006 until 2009. In this role, he led the WHD in its interpretation and enforcement of the FLSA, the FMLA, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract Act, and numerous other federal statutes. Nominated by the President, Mr. Passantino was responsible for enforcement policy, field operations, strategic planning, budgeting, media relations, legislation, regulations, opinion letters, compliance assistance, and personnel matters. Mr. Passantino joined the Department of Labor in 2005 as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Honorable Victoria A. Lipnic, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. In that capacity, Mr. Passantino was a member of the WHD’s Executive Team and provided legal and policy advice on a range of wage and hour matters, with emphasis on the FLSA and the FMLA. Before his work at the Department of Labor, Mr. Passantino served as a law clerk to the Honorable John F. Nangle in the Southern District of Georgia, after which he practiced law for eight years in Atlanta and Nashville, focusing on FLSA, employment discrimination, First Amendment, and consumer and financial services litigation. · Labor and Employment

Alison Ashford

Partner · Construction

Amanda Genovese

Partner · Commercial Litigation

Amanda Sonneborn

Amanda Sonneborn is a partner in the Labor and Employment Department of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and is Co-Chair of the Chicago L&E Department and former chair of the ERISA & Employee Benefits Litigation Practice Group. She actively advises clients in the healthcare, construction, print media, hotel, gaming, manufacturing, transportation, and retail industries. She has considerable experience in the area of Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) litigation. Her ERISA and employee benefits litigation experience includes defense of claims for benefits, breach of fiduciary duty claims, cash balance plan claims, breach of contract claims, and ERISA Section 510 employment discrimination claims. Amanda devotes a considerable amount of her practice to the litigation of class-action and multi-plaintiff claims. She is also particularly well-versed in the field of labor and employee relations law. Within this arena, she has represented clients in unfair labor practice proceedings, contractual arbitrations, representation proceedings, and Section 301 litigation. She also has experience advising clients during union organizing campaigns. In addition, she provides clients with day-to-day labor relations advice on a wide spectrum of topics, including independent contractor issues, neutrality agreements, and corporate campaigns. Amanda has substantial experience with non-union employment issues as well. She has represented clients in litigation under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the WARN Act, the Illinois Human Rights Act, the Illinois Minimum Wage Act, the Minnesota Human Rights Act, and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. She also counsels various clients on day-to-day employment law matters and assists clients with revisions to employee handbooks, employee-related policies, and employment applications. She leads various training courses with Seyfarth Shaw at Work®, including anti-harassment training and positive employee relations training. · Labor and Employment

Amy Conant-Hoang

Partner and Co-Chair of Government Contracts Practice Group, Seyfarth Shaw LLP · Government Contracts

Andrew Lucano

Partner, Vice Chair of Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group, and Office Chair of New York Corporate · Capital Markets

Andrew Paley

Andrew Pearlstein

Partner · Real Estate

Andrew Scroggins

Andy Scroggins is a member of the firm’s Complex Discrimination Litigation and Wage & Hour Litigation Practice Groups. He regularly represents companies across the country facing class actions, collective actions, pattern or practice lawsuits, and systemic investigations, involving hundreds to thousands of putative class members. He also has extensive experience on matters before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ranging from the early charge stage to systemic litigation. He has been lead counsel for Epic Systems in the district and appellate courts, and co-counsel at the United States Supreme Court, in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, which established that employers lawfully may require employees to enter into an arbitration agreement containing a waiver of the ability to participate in a class or collective action against an employer. He also served as counsel for M&G Polymers at the district and appellate courts, and before the United States Supreme Court, in Tackett v. M&G Polymers, a significant ruling for employers which overturned the Sixth Circuit’s decades-old “Yard-Man presumption” in cases involving the interpretation of collective bargaining agreements and the duration of retiree health benefits. · Complex Discrimination Litigation

Annette Tyman

Partner · Labor & Employment

Ariel Cudkowicz

Ariel Cudkowicz is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw's Boston office, serving as the Co-Chair of the firm's national Employment Litigation & Counseling Practice Group and as Co-Managing Partner of the Boston office. His practice focuses on employment litigation with a particular emphasis on wage and hour collective and class actions, complex single-plaintiff employment discrimination litigation and workplace advice and counseling. He specializes in representing companies in the retail industry in FLSA collective actions, and in the hospitality industry in class actions challenging the distribution of tips and service charges under state and federal laws. He also provides advice to Fortune 100 and 500 corporations on compliance with state and federal wage and hour laws and avoidance of litigation under those laws. Ariel has extensive experience defending single and multi-plaintiff employment discrimination cases brought under federal and state laws and employment-related breach of contract and tort claims. He also has extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution proceedings, including arbitration, mediation, conciliation and summary and mini-trials encompassing most substantive areas of employment law. · Employment Litigation

Arren Goldman

Partner · Commercial Real Estate

Arthur Telegen

Arthur Telegen is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw in the firm's Labor Management Relations Practice Group. He specializes in union-management relations, representing clients in federal court and before the National Labor Relations Board, at arbitration, and in collective bargaining. · Labor and Employment

Ashley Sherwood

Partner · Construction

Barry Miller

Partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP · Labor & Employment

Bart Lazar

Partner · Intellectual Property

Ben Conley

Partner · Employee Benefits

Bennett Greenberg

Mr. Greenberg is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. He is a member of the firm’s national construction practice and concentrates his practice in design and construction law. His work includes negotiating and drafting contracts setting forth the rights and responsibilities of the various parties to complex construction projects. He also counsels clients on procurement-related issues, contract administration, risk management, and dispute avoidance, and has extensive experience preparing claim documentation in support of equitable adjustments to contracts. Mr. Greenberg has successfully mediated, litigated, and arbitrated large complex, multi-party construction disputes. Mr. Greenberg represents public and private sector owners, contractors, and design professionals in the design-build process. He has advised and educated clients on alternative project delivery systems, prepared and responded to request for proposals, drafted and negotiated design-build contracts structuring the relationships between the design-build participants, and has counseled clients on administering design-build contracts. · Construction Law

Bradford Livingston

Brad Livingston is a partner in the Chicago office and long-serving former Chair of the firm’s national Labor and Employee Relations Practice Group. He represents employers in all aspects of employment law and litigation, with a particular emphasis on labor relations matters, including labor-related advice and counseling, work before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), collective bargaining negotiations, and grievance administration and arbitration. · Employment Law

Brandon Bigelow

Brandon L. Bigelow is a partner in the Litigation Department of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and Chair of the National Antitrust & Competition Practice Group. He represents clients in complex commercial matters, including franchise disputes, software piracy claims, and antitrust and consumer class action litigation. Mr. Bigelow has appeared before state and federal courts on behalf of clients in a variety of industries, including software designers, motor vehicle and medical device manufacturers, hedge funds, broker-dealers, and pharmaceutical companies. He also counsels clients on compliance issues involving state and federal competition laws, including regulatory review of merger and acquisition transactions under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Chambers USA has recognized Mr. Bigelow as a leading lawyer in antitrust in Massachusetts. He is also listed in Super Lawyers for his skill in business litigation. Mr. Bigelow teaches as an adjunct professor of law at Boston College Law School. He is a vice chair of the Insurance and Financial Services Committee of the ABA Section of Antitrust Law and a past co-chair of the Class Action Committee of the Boston Bar Association. He has published articles about antitrust, consumer class actions and securities issues in the Boston Bar Journal, Massachusetts Law Review, and various other publications. Prior to his law career, Mr. Bigelow served as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy from 1994 to 1998, and he now maintains an active maritime practice. · Antitrust

Brent Clark

Mr. Clark is a partner in the Firm’s Labor and Employment Department and Chair of the Workplace Safety and Environmental practice group. He focuses his practice on litigation defense, trial and appellate practice, and handles OSHA, MSHA, environmental, workplace whistleblower, tort and toxic tort, and employment litigation matters. As an OSHA and MSHA litigator, he has defended against willful, serious, repeat, unwarrantable failure, Section 110(c) and egregious citations, including hearings and appeals to the OSHA Review Commission, the Mine Safety Health Review Commission and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. He has tried numerous cases before Federal and State OSHA courts. He has provided analysis, investigation, and advice regarding potential criminal and whistleblower allegations and claims including discrimination, termination, retaliation, and whistleblower claims under OSHA, MSHA, DOT, Air 21, and the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA). Mr. Clark has experience in investigating, reporting, and defending against claims arising from workplace fatalities, explosions, fires and catastrophes in general industry and construction. He also provides general compliance counseling and advice concerning OSHA and MSHA inspections and investigations, internal audits and compliance issues. Mr. Clark advises clients and trade associations regarding comments on new and proposed OSHA standards and has testified before OSHA regarding standards such as OSHA’s ergonomics standard. His experience in the area of environmental law includes litigating a variety of claims under federal and state environmental statutes and regulations before federal and state courts and agencies. He has defended and prosecuted claims under CERCLA (Superfund), RCRA, TSCA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, EPCRA, Underground Storage Tanks (UST’s), DOT, FAA and related state statutes and regulations. Mr. Clark also provides general environmental compliance counseling and assists clients with internal audits, compliance programs, agency inspections, and transactions involving environmental issues. He represents clients regarding chemical and environmental product regulations and hazardous materials including mercury, lead, and VOC’s. He handles the investigation, litigation and trial defense against environmental, whistleblower, discrimination and retaliation claims. Mr. Clark’s experience in tort and toxic tort litigation includes actions covering negligence, chemical exposures, chemical releases, groundwater contamination, underground storage tanks, property damage, premises liability, product liability, respondeat superior, and intentional torts including cases involving benzene, asbestos, silica, lead, PCB’s, mold, solvents and hazardous wastes and hazardous substances. Mr. Clark lectures frequently to trade and industry groups on OSHA and MSHA compliance and defense, whistleblower investigations and defense, environmental compliance and litigation matters, and various issues relating to hazardous and toxic chemicals. · Labor and Employment

Brett Bartlett

Innovative partner and business advisor helping employers to solve problems practically, especially related to the defense of complex and class action employee pay-related litigation and the execution of best practice workforce solutions and strategies. · Labor and Employment

Brian Ashe

Brian Ashe is a partner representing employers in all aspects of labor and employment law. His main areas of practice are employment litigation, employment class actions and counseling. Brian defends employers in complex wage and hour class actions, discrimination litigation, multi-party trade secret cases and multi-party contract litigation. He counsels clients in various aspects of human resources management, including employee privacy, employee discipline, wrongful discharge and equal employment opportunity. His counseling practice focuses on prevention and artful business strategy. · Labor and Employment

Brian Stolzenbach

Partner · Labor and Employment

Bryan O'Keefe

Partner, Seyfarth Shaw, LLP · Labor and Employment

Camille Olson

Camille Olson is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP and Chair of its National Complex Discrimination Litigation Practice Group. · Complex Discrimination Litigation

Catherine Burns

Partner · Real Estate

Charles \"Chuck\" Wall

Partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP · Construction

Chelsea Mesa

Chelsea Mesa is a partner in the Labor & Employment Department in the Los Angeles office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Her practice focuses on advising employers concerning various employment-related issues, including compliance with California and federal anti-discrimination, anti-harassment and leave laws, and other human resources practices, as well as negotiating and documenting employment and severance agreements. Chelsea also counsels clients on their employment policies, and performs trainings on all aspects of employment conduct, including California-mandated sexual harassment training, discrimination training, and training on the interplay of the Americans with Disabilities Act with state and federal leave laws. In addition, Chelsea advises employers on hiring and termination decisions, including those where federal and state WARN requirements are triggered, and handling performance deficiencies and evaluations. Chelsea has extensive experience litigating employment matters on behalf of clients in the retail, manufacturing, entertainment, distribution, food-service, health care and technology industries, including single-plaintiff discrimination, wage and hour, harassment, and wrongful termination matters, as well as class actions. Chelsea also has experience in handling traditional labor matters, including arbitrations regarding issues arising under collective bargaining agreements and advising clients on union-related issues. · Labor and Employment

Christian Canas

Senior Counsel · Nonprofit Organizations

Christina Janice

Christina Janice is a senior counsel of Seyfarth Shaw. Her practice focuses on defending employers throughout the country in complex, high profile employment discrimination class actions and single plaintiff litigation, EEOC pattern or practice lawsuits, wage & hour class and collective actions, Department of Labor compliance partnerships, EEOC systemic and individual investigations and subpoena enforcement proceedings, and executive and other high profile individual employment disputes. A former in-house vice president, associate general counsel and head of litigation for a multinational S&P 500 Index company, Christina provides employers with a unique combination of strategic legal counsel with a business partner perspective: counseling clients to achieve informed and innovative solutions to a wide variety of compliance topics, domestic and international labor disputes and human resources matters, internal audits, complex internal investigations, executive compensation and severance programs, and workforce integration and retrenchment incident to mergers and acquisitions. She has extensive experience in arbitration, mediation and other forms of early alternative dispute resolution, and in counseling employers on the effective use of these methodologies. Christina is a contributing author to the firm's annual EEOC-Initiated Litigation Report and Workplace Class Action Blog. · Employment Law

Christopher DeGroff

Chris DeGroff is the national Co-Chair of the firm's Complex Discrimination Litigation Practice Group, the Labor and Employment Department Chair for Chicago, and a Member of the Labor and Employment Department's Steering Committee. He represents employers throughout the country and in a wide range of employment law matters largely focused on multi-plaintiff and class/collective actions. His class action experience spans the entire scope of employment law theories, including claims of race, age and gender discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation and wage and hour matters. He also has extensive experience litigating against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), at the early charge stage, in administrative subpoena enforcement actions, and in large-scale EEOC pattern-or-practice litigation. · Employment Law

Christopher Robertson

Mr. Robertson is Co-Chair of the National Whistleblower Team and a member of the Complex Litigation, Capital Markets and Investment Management practice areas in the Boston Office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. His areas of focus include complex commercial and financial litigation, securities litigation, consumer fraud litigation, regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and internal investigations. He has defended and advised corporations, broker-dealers, investment companies, investment advisers, advertisers and media companies, Internet companies, and their officers and directors in connection with class actions, derivative and private litigation, as well as audits, investigations, arbitrations and litigation commenced by federal and state authorities, self-regulatory organizations, and shareholders. He has handled matters and tried cases in the federal and state trial and appellate courts, as well as before the U.S. Congress, U.S. Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, state securities and consumer protection agencies, and self-regulatory bodies, including the NYSE, AMEX and NASD. Prior to joining Seyfarth Shaw, Mr. Robertson was Senior Counsel with the SEC’s Division of Enforcement in Washington, D.C., where he investigated and litigated, among others, accounting, insider trading, investment management, corporate misconduct, investment adviser and broker-dealer matters. · Complex Litigation

Cliff Fonstein

Cliff Fonstein is a partner in the Labor & Employment Department and a member of Seyfarth Shaw’s national Whistleblower Team, as well as its Financial Services Employment Practice Team. He has litigated all types of employment cases for Fortune 500 companies, from single-plaintiff whistleblower and discrimination claims to large class actions. In the past few years, he has provided advice to financial services, manufacturing and media companies, pertaining to training, terminations, compensation and other employment-related issues and has represented these clients in state and federal court and before FINRA arbitration panels. · Labor and Employment

Coby Turner

Partner, Seyfarth Shaw, LLP · Labor and Employment

Condon McGlothlen

Condon McGlothlen is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago. For the past 20 years, he has helped clients reduce legal risk by improving employment policies and practices. He is a trusted advisor to large public and private companies looking to develop, implement, and apply best-in-class approaches to hiring, promotions, and group separations ─ both voluntary and involuntary. He has defended employers in private class and collective actions, and against pattern or practice cases brought by the EEOC. He is a nationally recognized authority on group separation programs and agreements plus all related facets of compliance, as well as on pre-employment and employment testing. · Labor and Employment

Cory Hirsch

Co-Office Managing Partner of the Firm’s Chicago office · Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation

Cynthia Mitchell

Partner, Co-Chair of Health Care Real Estate & Finance Practice Group, and Co-Leader of Health Care, Life Sciences & Pharmaceuticals Practice Group · Health Care Real Estate & Finance

Dana Treister

Partner · Real Estate

Daniel Evans

Partners · Real Estate Finance

Daniel Joshua Salinas

Joshua represents clients in complex commercial disputes involving trade secrets and restrictive covenants, unfair competition, contract, and intellectual property claims in both state and federal court. His experience includes the prosecution and defense of trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, and patent infringement claims. Joshua has extensive experience in trial preparation, discovery, and law and motion. He also advises clients on noncompetition, nonsolicitation, and nondisclosure agreements, protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights, and litigation avoidance strategies. Joshua is also an author of the firm’s trade secret blog, www.tradesecretslaw.com. · Trade Secrets

Daniel Klein

Partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP · Labor & Employment

David Baffa

Mr. Baffa is Chair of the Workplace Compliance Solutions Group at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, which focuses on change management and the delivery of proactive solutions that help clients avoid mass litigation and develop internal compliance initiatives. Each year since 2009, he has been listed by Legal 500 as one of six "Leading Lawyers" in the United States in the area of Workplace and Employment Law Counseling. He was first inducted into the Legal 500 “Hall of Fame” in 2017, and remains one of only 500 lawyers in the Hall of Fame in all disciplines across the country, in recognition of his consistent praise received by clients. Mr. Baffa also co-chairs the Employment Litigation Group, drawing upon his litigation experience to drive efficiency in the management of routine employment litigation, promote teamwork and the sharing of best practices, and stay abreast of employment law substantive and procedural developments. He is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt, and uses the SeyfarthLean approach to deliver increased value to clients. Mr. Baffa has assisted numerous clients with global pay equity analyses and DEI strategies, business restructuring and workforce reductions, and corporate culture assessments and crisis management. He has led the centralization and process-mapping of leave of absence and disability accommodation management, developed comprehensive arbitration and dispute resolution programs, conducted exempt-status and pay practice assessments, and developed tools and systems for assessing employee engagement, reviewing hiring processes, monitoring state and local developments, and analyzing independent contractor and other alternative worker arrangements. Mr. Baffa has overseen the development, implementation, testing and validation of complex artificial intelligence tools and employee selection systems. He has also conducted extensive employee and management training through Seyfarth Shaw At Work, including leave management training, anti-harassment training and positive employment relations training. More recently, Mr. Baffa has helped global organizations respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to manage complex remote work and pandemic recovery projects as organizations brace for new ways of working. Mr. Baffa has broad-based employment litigation and traditional labor experience. He handles federal and state employment litigation, including cases involving allegations of sex, race, and national origin discrimination, age discrimination and Older Worker Benefit Protection Act violations, pay discrimination claims, sex harassment issues, failure to accommodate and disability discrimination claims, breach-of-contract and employment-at-will lawsuits and wrongful discharge disputes. He also has experience managing administrative agency investigations, including systemic initiative, pattern-and-practice and disparate impact claims involving unequal pay, hiring and pre-employment testing, background checking, promotion, and reasonable accommodation processes. Mr. Baffa also has experience litigating labor arbitration cases, conducting election campaigns, negotiating collective bargaining agreements, and handling proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board. · Hiring, Testing and Selection

David Blake

David Blake is a partner in Seyfarth’s Construction practice in the Washington, DC office. Based on his more than 25 years of experience, David creates and implements strategies that drive successful client outcomes during all phases of a construction project, including contract drafting, project administration and dispute resolution. Clients look to David to draft and negotiate effective construction, construction management, design-build, EPC, design, and equipment purchase agreements. During the course of a project, David assists his clients in resolving construction and design issues in a practical and creative manner. When controversies persist, David prosecutes and defends requests for equitable adjustment and claims for issues such as delay, labor inefficiency, and extra work. David has successfully settled numerous disputes through mediation. He is also an experienced litigator, representing his clients before state and federal courts, the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals, and the American Arbitration Association. David has represented his clients on a wide array of private and public construction projects - including foreign embassies, professional sports stadiums, commercial office and mixed-use buildings, high rise residential, courthouses, hospitals, schools, airports, marine ports, highways, refineries, hydro, solar and biomass power generation, industrial facilities, and waste water treatment plants. David holds an undergraduate degree in architecture, and he has been an LEED-accredited professional since 2006. As such, he offers his clients a rare background that is particularly valuable given the technically oriented nature of construction law. · Construction

Dawn Lurie

Senior Counsel · Labor and Employment

Dawn Mertineit

For more than a decade, Dawn Mertineit has represented corporations and their directors and officers in a number of industries in complex commercial litigation, litigating partnership, franchise, real estate, and whistleblower disputes, with a special emphasis on noncompete and trade secrets litigation. She understands that many clients rely on noncompete and nonsolicitation agreements to protect their most valuable assets, while others face hurdles in recruiting and onboarding new employees bound by such restrictive covenants. Dawn brings her experience and knowledge of state and federal laws to help her clients navigate these issues, from drafting agreements and executing rollout and enforcement strategies, to analyzing competitor agreements and proposing recruitment and onboarding plans and prosecuting or defending against claims related to breach of restrictive covenants or misappropriation of trade secrets. · Commercial Litigation

Debbie Caplan

Debbie Caplan is Senior Counsel in the Labor & Employment Department in the Los Angeles office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. A former employment litigator in both state and federal courts, Ms. Caplan now focuses her practice exclusively on providing advice and counseling to employers on day-to-day human resources and employee relations issues, such as leave law management, wage/hour compliance, disciplinary and performance counseling, reasonable accommodation/interactive process, hiring and termination issues, harassment/discrimination complaints, internal investigations, drafting compliance policy documentation, and exempt/non-exempt classifications. In addition to day-to-day counseling, Ms. Caplan assists employers in the preparation of various employment-related documents, such as handbooks and policy manuals, job applications, offer letters and employment agreements, arbitration agreements, leave documentation, new hire and termination paperwork, severance and release agreements, compensation and bonus plans, and travel and expense reimbursement plans. · Labor and Employment

Denice Tokunaga

Denice is Office Co-Managing Partner and works with real estate developers, public and private companies, private equity, and pension funds to help meet their domestic and international growth goals through the purchase and sale of commercial and mixed-use projects, as well as representing both landlords and tenants of commercial and industrial space. Denice has extensive experience representing e-commerce companies in industrial leasing, having negotiated leases for more than 284 million square feet for fulfilment, distribution, data center, last mile, and other industrial uses. Many of her US-based clients look to her to represent them in their expansion into other countries—overseeing and negotiating the acquisition, leasing, and development of build-to-suit and market refurbish projects. Denice has a particular focus on working with clients from a variety of industries on scaling their real estate portfolios to support their growth across the US and globally. · Real Estate

Diane Dygert

Partner and Chair of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Department · Employee Benefits

Douglas Mancino

Partner · Tax

Dyann DelVecchio Hilbern

Dyann DelVecchio Hilbern is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw LLP's Boston office. She provides high-level advising and U.S. immigration portfolio management for corporations, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations. Clients describe her as “passionate about her work and compassionate towards the foreign workers’ situations.” A frequent panelist and trainer, and an enthusiastic mentor to law students and junior practitioners, Dyann has co-authored a number of articles on immigration law and is often interviewed by the press on issues relating to immigration. · Immigration Law

Elisabeth Watson

Liz Watson is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw LLP's downtown Los Angeles office. She is also a member of the firm's Wage and Hour Litigation Practice Group. Liz specializes in wage and hour class actions, single plaintiff cases, workplace investigations, OSHA, False Claims Act Retaliation, independent contractor, employment counseling, and other areas of labor and employment. · Wage And Hour Litigation

Ellen McLaughlin

Ellen McLaughlin is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw LLP's Chicago office. She is a trusted advisor on workplace issues, with a practice focused on creating compliant HR practices and systems to achieve business purposes and avoid litigation, advising on complex leave and accommodation issues and investigating C-suite and other sensitive matters. · Employment Litigation

Eric Janson

Partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP · Labor & Employment

Erica Bakies

Senior Counsel, Seyfarth Shaw LLP · Government Contracts

Frederick Smith

Labor and Employment