Law Firm Collapse Leads to WARN Suit, Possibly Against Other Firms
Posted on December 1st, 2008 by Tim Eavenson | No Comments »Filed under: ., HR Issues, Labor Law, The Financial Crisis |
One of the many misconceptions “corrected” by the financial crisis is that law firms are recession-proof. That notion was buried last month when Thelen, an interneational legal presence, voted to dissolve.
While this is tragic on many levels, the biggest is of course the thousands of employees who found themselves out of work as a result. Good news, then, when reports started coming in that other firms, including Reed Smith, Winston & Strawn and Duane Morris started snatching up chunks of the former firm. Nixon Peabody brought over partners in every practice group, tripling the size of its Silicone Valley office. They plan on hiring staff and associates too. That’s got to be a good thing. Right?
Maybe not.
Some of the former Thelen attorneys have filed class-action suits alleging that Thelen violated the WARN Act when they closed offices without the proper 60-day notice.
The ABA Journal is reporting that the attorney who filed one of the suits is now saying the firms hiring these large collections of former Thelen offices may be liable as well. His theory is this:
To the extent that the company is dissolved, the individual partners of Thelen may be responsible, and any law firm that’s taken on a large group of Thelen partners could potentially be considered a successor company, which is liable under labor laws to make good on Thelen’s obligations to its employees.
Interesting. It may be worthwhile to think about the strategy of suing the hiring firms, though. In an economy where over 1 million people have lost their jobs in the past year, it may be a tough sell to force the firms willing to hire to pay for Thelen’s sins.
Leave a Reply
Comments are moderated before they appear.
Anonymous comments are discouraged.