Employment
For more than 30 years, Jones Bell has held a prominent place in the Southern California legal community. Our clients include national, regional, and local companies engaged in a variety of industries and commerce. While they are diverse in their areas of business, they share one trait: they rely on Jones Bell to counsel them in all aspect of labor and employment litigation, including age, race, gender, national origin, and disability discrimination and harassment, retaliation, breach of contract, wrongful termination, privacy rights, independent contractor agreements, and various wage and hour claims, including class actions. Moreover, Jones Bell provides advice and counseling services and litigation avoidance strategies including drafting of policy manuals and handbooks, and conducting exhaustive wage and hour and labor code audits.
One of the hallmarks of Jones Bell's employment practice is our expertise in defending single and multi-party litigation pursued under the California Fair Employment Housing Act (FEHA). Additionally, Jones Bell lawyers understand the exigency of providing clear, concise, and practical advice and counseling on employment law matters. We understand that clients need fast and effective counseling on employment issues and we stand ready to provide such counseling.
In addition to effectively handling employment litigation and advice and counseling issues, we are well equipped to provide employment law audits, reviewing each and every policy of employers to ascertain the legality and potential class action exposure. Likewise, we have the ability to provide on-going training sessions so that managers and other personnel understand their obligations under California law with respect to the handling of employees and potential disputes in the workplace. Finally, our team has the ability to conduct in-depth workplace investigations should any allegations of impropriety in the workplace arise.
We offer practical advice and proactive strategies designed both to ensure compliance and manage litigation risks within the broader context of our clients' strategic goals, market place and regulatory environment. Our advice and counseling lawyers provide a wide array of counseling and practice assessment services. We frequently assist employers of varied sizes to evaluate whether their managers understand their obligations under the relevant laws, as well as under the employer's policies, and whether non-exempt employees understand their obligations to record working time accurately. We also help employers assist in classification of their employees to ensure that those who are not paid minimum wage or overtime actually satisfy the test for exemptions from federal and state wage/hour requirements.
Jones Bell has also developed an audit program, to educate our client's managers about various requirements of the California Labor code and to assist in legal compliance. Using this program, we audit employment policies and practices to ensure compliance with over 200 key provisions of the California Labor Code. To bring efficiencies to such an audit, we have developed a checklist of questions directly tied to each of the key Labor sections, which allows us to quickly spot trouble areas and offer solutions.
As a result of our counseling and audit services, our clients have experienced reduction in their exposure to liability for litigation and have enjoyed greater consistency in their labor practices across their operations.
Jones Bell also offers advice and representation for employment related transactions concerning executive compensation, deferred compensation, and employee benefit plans, including incentive stock options, non-qualified options, phantom stock and SAR Plans, non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements, and leveraged ESOP transactions.