IEL Elite

Overview

The employment team at Orrick offers considerable global coverage, with experts across the US, and in Düsseldorf, London, Milan, Paris, and Tokyo.

Laura Becking in New York and Julie Totten (who splits her time between Sacramento and San Francisco) are key points of contact in the team.

The department has significantly bolstered its offering in the past year, and notably in California. In March 2022, the firm hired tech sector specialist Christina Bouchot from Goodwin Procter to its Los Angeles office. This followed the appointment to the partnership of Katie Briscoe in Sacramento and Alex Stathopoulos in San Francisco in February 2022.

Specialisms

The team offers an integrated employment counselling, litigation, and compensation and benefits practice with a global reach. Its broad know-how spans workforce downsizing and other restructuring processes, outsourcing, alternative hiring practices, and D&I.

On the contentious side, the firm demonstrates prowess in representing clients before agencies, tribunals, and courts. Its expertise spans disputes over terminations, allegations of discrimination or harassment, wage and hour issues, and cross-border trade secret protection.

The team is particularly well-versed in supporting companies with the employment aspects of corporate operations – from M&A through to IPOs – including both pre- and post-transaction. For example, team members in London, New York, and San Francisco assisted Workday with the employment aspects of its acquisition of the issued share capital of a number of HR software and HR platform providers, including Peakon and VNDLY, and on post-acquisition integration.

In addition, the group is well placed to advise on more novel issues, from remote working policies through to new forms of acquiring talent. This was evidenced in the instruction to London-based partner Nicola Whiteley, who acted for Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify on its acquihire of UK B2B commerce platform ePorta.

Notably, the team’s global footprint allows it to offer seamless cross-border advice on issues as diverse as annual leave entitlements, maternity leave requirements, employee terminations, and D&I surveys. This extends to assisting with the development of templates for compensation plans, as well as the tax ramifications of global equity programmes, and corporate immigration.

Clients