Employment Law

Your employees are one of your company’s most valuable assets, but they also can be one of your biggest challenges, particularly from an employment law perspective.

Young and growing companies face big issues, such as increasingly burdensome employment laws, rising costs to defend employment claims, and threats to the very core of their business from employees stealing trade secrets and engaging in unfair competition.

Meeting these challenges, while not getting bogged down by unreasonable legal fees, requires a strong – and strategic – partnership with an employment attorney who truly understands and values your needs and goals, as well as your budget.

Here’s how to get the best results for the best value from your employment lawyer.

When to ask for help

Not every employee problem requires legal advice. However, waiting too long to call your employment lawyer can turn what could have been a small problem into a much larger (and more expensive) one.

So how do you strike the right balance? To begin with, ask your employment lawyer to help you figure this out. Have a conversation about the types of employee situations that typically call for legal advice and those that do not.

Employee terminations tend to be a high-risk area, as do employee medical leaves, independent contractor classifications, and noncompete agreements (just to name a few).

Checking in with your lawyer early on in these situations to make sure you are heading down the right road is much more cost-effective than waiting until later when you are forced to defend a lawsuit.

Your employment lawyer can also work with you to proactively manage the situation in a way that will help you avoid legal claims (or build your best case if a claim becomes unavoidable).

A shared understanding

There is tremendous value and efficiency baked into the relationship when your employment lawyer really understands your business and your goals.

This kind of knowledge allows your lawyer to tailor his or her advice to your specific needs, rather than giving you a one-size-fits-all answer that doesn’t really work.

Examples of ways your attorney can gain this knowledge include anything from lunches and happy hours to more structured annual or quarterly planning meetings.

This face-time should typically be off-the-clock, with fees being charged only for projects that result from these meetings.

For large projects, including employment litigation, having a kick-off meeting specifically to discuss your goals and objectives for that project or piece of litigation is critical. Consider this example – a former employee files a lawsuit claiming age discrimination.

You hire an aggressive litigation team and barrel forward into litigation, expending large amounts of money in legal fees, devoting countless hours of your management team’s time in depositions and the like.

This approach may be entirely appropriate, but did your lawyer ever sit down with you at the beginning of the case and ask you if that was the strategy you wanted to follow, and if that strategy made business sense given the amount of money at stake?

Not having up-front, specific conversations about your goals and objectives could result in misunderstandings about the value you expected for the amount of money you spent.

Creative solutions

Another strategy for managing legal costs while still getting great value is to look for an employment lawyer who offers creative and proactive solutions rather than traditional, reactive approaches.

Does your employment lawyer offer flat-fee training or other employment law compliance programs tailored to new and growing businesses to help you comply with federal, state and local laws while not worrying about unpredictable or unforeseen legal fees?

Does your employment lawyer provide you with checklists or other guides covering employment law topics, such as hiring, wage-and-hour laws, and departing employee best practices, as well as access to seminars and webinars on employment law topics?

And does your employment lawyer proactively reach out to let you know when new employment laws pass or court decisions come down that might affect your workplace policies?

Working with an employment lawyer who offers creative and proactive solutions to manage and reduce legal risks will help save you money in the long run.

Let’s talk about fees

Open communication is key to a successful attorney-client relationship. If you do not discuss fees and costs up front, there may be miscommunication or unmet expectations later on. But this does not mean simply asking the attorney for his or her hourly rate.

Instead, it means having an open discussion about your budget and what fee structure meets your needs, whether that is traditional hourly billing or an alternative fee arrangement, such as a flat fee or retainer-based approach.

For large projects, such as employment litigation, or other matters with many moving parts, you should also look for a lawyer who will discuss with you the scope of the project (and, ideally, give you a written scope of work agreement) so you both are on the same page about what the estimate, flat fee, or retainer covers – and what it does not.

Lawyers who use these and other project management tools will be well-positioned to keep matters on track and efficient. Demanding transparency and open communication when it comes to fees will go a long way toward preventing an unexpectedly large bill.

Young and growing companies face many challenges in staying on top of ever-changing employment laws and managing legal risks related to their employees.

Just because those challenges exist, however, does not mean you have to meet those challenges alone. Instead, create an attorney-client relationship that maximizes value and focuses on meeting your company’s needs and objectives.