Labor and Employment Law Career Guide

Introduction

There is something fundamental to a person’s identity about work. “People’s jobs are their lives,” says Claire Prestel ’02. “It gives you your sense of who you are as a person, your sense that you are contributing to society. Anyone who has been laid off or spent a period of time involuntarily unemployed knows how bad that feels.” Work allows us to pay the bills, but is also a fundamental outlet through which we express ourselves to the broader community. Work defines our daily schedule and also shapes our future aspirations. 

It follows that workplace issues, which exist in all regions and sectors across the world, are often microcosms of larger community problems. Shelley Gregory ’01, formerly Senior Staff Attorney at the Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, notes that, “People bring all of their ideas, their beliefs, their perceptions, and their ways of making sense of the world into their workplace with them.” She goes on to explain that “Our workplaces are much more regulated than our homes. There is a lot that goes on in the workplace that really has a serious effect on people’s lives.” As a result, working in labor and employment law enables lawyers to make a noticeable and widespread difference in society. This guide will introduce you to some of the opportunities that can help you build a lasting, rewarding career in this field. 

Labor and Employment Law: An Overview

Labor law has traditionally encompassed the relationships among unions, employers, and employees. Labor laws grant employees in certain sectors the right to unionize and allow employers and employees to engage in certain workplace-related activities (for example, strikes and lockouts) in order to further their demands for changes in the employer-employee relationship. 

Employment law, on the other hand, is defined more broadly as the negotiated relationships between employers and employees. Although employment lawyers deal with many of the same parties as labor lawyers (i.e., workers and companies), they conventionally address issues that fall outside the framework of union-management relations and collective bargaining. As a result, the extent to which statutes or regulations pertain to unions and union-workers usually determines whether or not they are regarded as components of “labor law” or “employment law.” 

Given the distinguishable set of issues encompassed in each field, labor law and employment law remain discrete areas of practice. However, these two fields have, over time, become increasingly symbiotic. Careers in either field can involve both labor and employment law questions. This guide will give you a better sense of the major differences between the two areas so that you are better able to define your particular interests. 

Why Work in Labor or Employment Law?

Impact on Workers

The employer-employee relationship involves complex power dynamics. Shannon Liss-Riordan ’96, founding partner of Lichten & Liss-Riordan, P.C., a plaintiff-side employment and union-side labor law firm, laments that “the balance between employers and employees is grossly disproportionate.” In explaining why labor and employment lawyers are so necessary, Claire Prestel ’02 notes, “No one employee can stick their head up and complain without fear of retaliation. Anyone in any workplace knows how that works.” In the face of staggering amounts of illegal retaliation, lawyers are needed “to make workers’ rights real and to give them the courage to stand up in the future.” 

In distinguishing labor and employment law from other public interest fields, Laura Juran explains, “There is an immediacy to it that I just think is different. You are not dealing with impact litigation where you have some named plaintiff but it’s just kind of a plaintiff in theory. There is a real person in front of you who is crying and has had a terrible thing happen and you are there to help them. Some of the most satisfying cases I’ve handled as a labor lawyer are the cases where I get someone their job back and save their family’s livelihood.” 

The majority of lawyers interviewed echoed Juran’s emphasis on working face-to-face with real people from a variety of different occupations. Anand Swaminathan ’06, formerly with Vladeck, Waldman, Elias, & Engelhard, a union-side labor firm, and now with Loevy and Loevy, a civil rights firm in Chicago, remarks, “These people come in every day. I know their faces, I know their names, and I know about their problems. I spend a lot of time interacting with them directly so that I know and understand who I’m working for and who I’m representing.” If this type of interaction appeals to you, labor and employment law is a field that allows, and indeed is based on, such interpersonal exchanges. 

Nationwide Impact

On a larger scale, Claire Prestel ’02 notes that unions serve a function rarely perceived or appreciated by law students: “Corporations and big banks and all of these entities, they have a huge and growing amount of sway. You need a counterbalance and Congress can’t be that counterbalance because they get their money from the corporations. If you have unions, they represent thousands of employees. That’s the other side.” Laura Juran adds, “The unions are still the groups that can get out thousands of people on a day’s notice to vote on an issue…I really feel like we’re also protecting the middle class and middle-class interests.”

Labor and employment law also provides an opportunity to help increase access to the justice system for disenfranchised individuals across the country. Shelley Gregory ’01 notes, “I have found a way to take the education that I received at Harvard Law School and the access and the privilege and the benefits of being educated at a place like HLS and I’ve been able to use that to facilitate access to the judicial system or to systems that have the ability to provide real remedies to real live people who, in the absence of the work that we’re doing, might not have access to agents of authority.”

The Scope of the Field

The vagueness of the term “labor and employment law” can deter law students and attorneys when considered alongside easily definable fields that may sound more exciting, such as environmental law, education law, and health law. Yet labor and employment law is truly a versatile field that frequently touches on issues that arise in a wide range of other legal disciplines. 

Consider the career path of Robert DeGregory ’04. After graduating from HLS and clerking, he worked as an in-house attorney in the Pittsburgh office of the United Steelworkers, a union which represents workers in a diverse range of industries, such as steel, paper and forestry, tire and automotive, other types of manufacturing, oil and gas, health care, and pharmaceuticals. Much of his work in this position consisted of providing legal support to the union in negotiating collective bargaining agreements which regulated the rights, benefits and entitlements of workers for various companies, as well as enforcing the terms of those agreements through arbitration and litigation. A major concern was to protect the benefits, health insurance, and pensions that union members “worked for many years at often difficult and dangerous jobs” to obtain.

From there he moved to Los Angeles to work for the Writers Guild of America, representing union members in the film and television industry who work largely independently, often for many different employers over their career. They do not have “just cause protection” from discharge although they are guaranteed minimum compensation under their individual contracts pursuant to the major multiemployer collective bargaining agreement the Guild negotiates and enforces with major studios and independent producers. Issues included enforcing guaranteed compensation under individual agreements, ensuring back-end compensation for successful movies or shows, and handling intellectual property disputes over the rights of writers to control and be compensated for further exploitations of their original creative work. A somewhat whimsical-sounding example of such an intellectual property dispute, which nonetheless could have a substantial effect on a writer’s legal rights and entitlement to compensation, would be to determine “whether or not a toy that is being sold represents a generic pirate or whether it represents a particular pirate character described by the writer, or whether it represents a particular actor who played that pirate in a film or television show.”

Finally, he arrived at the National Hockey League Players Association in Toronto, Canada, where his work includes representing professional hockey players in grievance and arbitration proceedings and advising the Association in collective bargaining with the National Hockey League. Major issues include health and safety concerns arising from research and medical science on concussions and other sports-related injuries, protecting the guaranteed compensation of players who become injured and are no longer able to play, as well as broader issues of advocating for an appropriate share of overall revenues being paid to the players in compensation for their services. 

Other topics that frequently arise in the field but are not automatically connected to labor and employment law in people’s minds include gender, LGBTQ+ issues, disability, immigration, elder law, and bankruptcy. As Robin Alexander, Director of International Affairs for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, observes, “Most people mistakenly think of labor law as limited to the National Labor Relations Act,” when in fact it covers a diverse set of areas. 

The Culture of the Field

Finally, union and employee/plaintiff side lawyers appreciate the specific culture of the field. Lela Klein ’09 notes, “There is a palpable ethos within the office of commitment to workplace fairness.” Laura Juran has noticed that, while working in labor and employment law is certainly not a narrowing experience, “many folks who actually go into labor and employment law post-law school and start to make a career out of it do tend to stay in it,” due to a commitment to the goals of the labor movement and the importance of workers’ rights. 

Issue Areas

As noted in the Introduction, the fields of union and employee/plaintiff side law encompass a variety of different issue areas. Because of the interrelated nature of labor and employment laws, they are sometimes grouped under the broader category of “workers’ rights.” For this guide’s purposes, however, the issues discussed in each chapter will be subdivided into labor law and employment law. 

Labor Law

Labor lawyers primarily work in or on behalf of unions and their members. In doing so, they are working under standards prescribed by the National Labor Relations Act (and a few other relevant statutes), which encourages collective bargaining and governs worker organizations and their interactions with employers. Labor lawyers’ work may range from negotiating new collective bargaining agreements on behalf of hundreds or thousands of workers to advising union leaders to representing individual union members in arbitration proceedings. While union-management relations are governed by three specific federal statutes, discussed below, workers’ “continuing demand for collective action has forced open alternative legal channels, which include collective campaigns in which workers turn to employment law, in particular the Fair Labor Standards Act and Title VII, as the legal architecture that facilitates and protects their collective activity.” (source) As a result, attorneys who primarily practice “labor law” will inevitably deal with a multitude of issues that are traditionally considered to be employment issues, as outlined in the “Employment Law” section below. Indeed, because unions and their workers participate in so many different industries and activities, labor lawyers routinely face legal issues that fall outside the realm of either the traditional labor statutes or employment law—including questions of First Amendment and other constitutional law, election law, administrative law, environmental law, healthcare law, etc.

Unions and Collective Bargaining

Labor-management relations are governed by three major statutes that set forth standards regulating unions, their internal structure, and their interactions with employers. 

These three statutes are: the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the Railway Labor Act, and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA). The NLRA governs the means by which employers may react to union organizers, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands. The second major federal statute that addresses the rights of union workers is the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The primary purpose of the RLA is to offer employees of the railway and airline industries a process by which they are able to unionize and engage in collective bargaining while simultaneously protecting commerce from damaging work stoppages and delays, both domestically and internationally. Since the RLA provides similar legal protections to workers as the NLRA, workers who are covered by the RLA are not covered by the NLRA. The third major piece of federal legislation that pertains to the governance of unions is the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), commonly called the Landrum-Griffin Act. The Landrum-Griffin Act, which addresses union officer elections and financial controls, was established to ensure basic standards of democracy and fiscal responsibility in private sector labor organizations. 

Employment Law

Employment attorneys encounter a wide variety of issues related to the governance and structure of employment relationships in non-union workplaces. Some of these issues include wage and hour standards, discrimination, workplace safety and health, pensions and benefits, and workers’ compensation. In addition, they may also deal with some issues that are typically considered to be part of labor law practice (for example, the ability of workers to enforce employment rights collectively). 

Wage & Hour

Wage and hour standards constitute an important area of employment law. These standards include minimum wage, overtime pay, and underpayment in a variety of public and private workplaces, as well as family and medical benefits. Prevailing wages for government service and construction contracts fall within this area of employment law, as do work authorization criteria for non-U.S. citizens undertaking temporary, migrant, or agricultural work under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Wage and hour standards also cover workplace conditions for working children and protect children and adults alike from exposure to detrimental or unfair working conditions, such as those found in sweatshops and throughout the global human trafficking system. 

One focus within wage and hour work has been “wage theft.” There is also a great deal of work around guest workers. Lawyers in this field say a knowledge of immigration law and bankruptcy law (to try to collect from employers who declare bankruptcy) are both very useful. 

Discrimination

Workplace discrimination occurs when an employee suffers from unfavorable or unfair treatment in the workplace because of their age, gender, race, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. Disability laws also expand upon the employment rights of veterans and persons with disabilities. Although workplace discrimination is becoming more widely reported, it continues to affect millions of workers across the country. 

Some of the most significant pieces of legislation that protect workers from discrimination include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes a national minimum wage, guarantees “time-and-a-half” for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibits oppressive employment of minors. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted in 1990, is a body of civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability.

While discrimination cases are argued, for the most part, on an individual basis, class action suits have also been brought in courts all across the country on such issues.

Safety & Health

Safety and health regulations set standards designed to eliminate personal injuries and illnesses from occurring in the workplace. These standards are enforced through periodic workplace inspections. Standards for safety and health often require employers to adopt certain practices to appropriately protect workers on the job; employers are required to both familiarize themselves with the applicable standards and remove any hazards that might pose a threat to their employees. Numerous federal, state, and local job safety and health programs exist that cover both private sector and government employees.

Benefits & Pensions

Benefits can include retirement benefits as well as insurance plans (health, dental, life, etc.), daycare and tuition reimbursement plans, sick leave, and vacation (paid and non-paid). Pension standards deal more exclusively with the arrangement of funds to provide individuals with economic support when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. The Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) establishes minimum standards for pension plans in the private sector and prescribes extensive rules regarding the federal income tax effects of transactions associated with employee benefit plans. Benefits and pension regulation is also composed of employee benefit trust regulation, pension insurance, and unemployment insurance benefits. 

Workers’ Compensation

Workers’ compensation programs provide wage replacement, medical treatment, vocational rehabilitation, and other benefits to employees who are injured or develop an occupational disease over the course of employment. The four federal workers’ compensation programs that are overseen by the United States Department of Labor include: the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, the Federal Employees’ Compensation Program, the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Program, and the Black Lung Benefits Program. Each of these programs serves the specific employee groups that are covered under the applicable statutes and regulations by mitigating the financial burden resulting from workplace injury. There are also compensation programs that are administered by state governments and through the private sector. The workers’ compensation area is a fairly discrete one and tends to largely involve administrative advocacy rather than courtroom litigation. 

Other Workplace Standards

Additional issues that arise in the workplace, though not as frequently as those listed above, include whistleblower protections, laws against polygraph tests, notices for plant closings and mass layoffs, and reemployment rights for uniformed services. 

Practice Settings

Public interest, union and employee/plaintiff side attorneys may practice labor and employment law in a variety of settings. This section describes and provides general background information for four distinct practice settings: government, nonprofits, unions, and private public-interest law firms. Unions generally hire attorneys to practice labor law and nonprofit organizations typically hire attorneys to handle work related to employment law, while jobs with the government and with private public-interest firms allow opportunities to practice employment and/or labor law. 

Finally, included at the end of the section is a brief synopsis of the international market for labor and employment lawyers. 

Government: Labor and Employment Law

Federal Government

Attorneys practice labor and/or employment law in all levels of government. At the federal level, labor attorneys work within the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which administers the NLRA by investigating unfair labor practices and holding elections to determine union representation for private sector employees; the Department of Labor, which seeks to improve working conditions and assure benefits and rights and employs attorneys in the Office of the Solicitor, the Wage and Hour Division, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Office of Labor-Management Standards, among many others; the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), which serves as the NLRB counterpart for government employees; and the National Mediation Board (NMB), which facilitates labor relations for the airline and railroad sectors due to their importance in interstate commerce and travel. Additionally, because nearly every federal agency hires attorneys to handle internal personnel matters, there are opportunities throughout the federal government for employment work. 

Employment lawyers also work as part of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC focuses on preventing and remedying unlawful employment discrimination and advancing equal opportunity in the workplace. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is also involved in worker’s rights, particularly with respect to discrimination issues; this work is carried out in the Division’s Employment, Disability Rights, and Immigrant and Employee Rights Sections.  

Every federal agency also has an EEO office to investigate discrimination within the agency, though this work tends to be more management-side. Finally, the Office of Personnel Management administers the Fair Labor Standards Act for federal employees. 

State and Local Government

State agencies that work on labor and employment issues may include Departments of Labor, Workforce Development, Industrial Accidents, and Labor Relations. Attorneys working in a state agency primarily provide legal advice to agency employees or to other related agencies in order to improve workplace safety and health, enforce state or local collective bargaining laws and make policy for workforce development. Attorneys may assist agency personnel in developing policy initiatives, implementing statutes, handling litigation and administrative hearings, and may provide significant amounts of direct legal counseling to key personnel and politicians. 

Attorneys interested in labor and employment issues may also find meaningful work in the labor bureaus, civil rights divisions, and state solicitors’ offices of state attorneys’ general. There may also be a state human right commission that enforces discrimination laws; they investigate and prosecute violations or may refer them to the EEOC. 

Local law departments and city attorney’s offices employ lawyers to work on labor and employment law issues. The primary responsibilities of government attorneys who focus on labor and employment law at the local level are litigation, the enforcement of local laws, and the implementation of various government services and programs.

Advantages and Disadvantages

One disadvantage of government practice is that political considerations may affect an attorney’s work, as agency priorities will inevitably fluctuate as a result of administration changes. In addition, because government attorneys are responsible for representing the particular governmental body in which they serve, rather than individual workers, many government attorneys do not have the same level of direct client contact as attorneys who work in unions, nonprofits, and private public-interest law firms. 

Moreover, though government attorneys often have more resources available to them than attorneys working in nonprofit organizations, government attorneys may find that, as a result of the overarching executive bureaucracy, it can be difficult to push cases and programs through the system as quickly as they would like. On this point, Grayson Walker ’10, an attorney for EEOC’s Chicago Office, notes, “As a government attorney, just in distinction to a private plaintiff’s attorney, I don’t have as much control over the cases I litigate. Although I have less control over my caseload, I also have the opportunity to work on large systemic cases that might be too uncertain or expensive for a solo practitioner or small civil rights firm. For example, a private attorney may not pursue a disparate impact or class hiring case that requires statistical analysis or other expert discovery unless the initial evidence is overwhelming. The EEOC has the resources to litigate those cases and root out systemic discrimination.”

Government attorneys also must consider their obligation to serve the public good, as well as the cause of their clients, which can lead to a conflict of interests. Accepting the balance required between the needs of the agency and the needs of the individual victims involved can be a difficult feat for government employees. 

However, many government attorneys find that the frustrations outlined above are outweighed by the numerous advantages of government work. While the salaries of most government attorneys are not as high as the salaries of large private law firm lawyers, they are nevertheless typically higher and less volatile than salaries in the nonprofit sector. Not having to bill hours is a source of relief for many choosing to practice labor or employment law as a government employee rather than at a firm. Government attorneys also find that their hours are typically reasonable. 

Unions: Labor Law

Union attorneys appreciate the variety of their responsibilities as well as the diversity of the staff and union members they work with.

The activities of lawyers in this practice setting can be divided into two areas: the typical dispute-related work of a labor lawyer and the advising/organizing work that is specific to in-house union attorneys.

When disputes arise, union attorneys may find themselves filing complaints with the NLRB or other federal and state agencies, representing union members before an administrative judge, litigating on behalf of a union in court because the union is being sued or is suing someone else, or appealing NLRB cases to the federal or state court system.

In-house union attorneys are also involved in strategizing for campaigns; researching the legal aspects of the union’s legislative, regulatory and political advocacy work; working on the ground at a rally or strike in case issues arise; reviewing and drafting statements the union issues on a wide variety of subjects; negotiating new collective bargaining agreements with employers; and advising on the internal governance of the union, on the reporting requirements of the U.S. Department of Labor or about how to operate effectively in countries with different legal systems. 

In light of these in-house specific tasks, and especially in large unions, in-house attorneys may spend more of their time on advice and counsel than do attorneys in private firms, who focus primarily on active litigation. Union attorneys’ responsibilities for negotiating new collective bargaining agreements also help them acquire outstanding negotiating skills.

Interacting with and representing union members can vary heavily across unions based on the size and structure of the union, which is certainly a factor to keep in mind when considering in-house jobs. 

The work of an in-house attorney at a union can vary quite substantially from the work of an attorney at a private public-interest firm serving as outside counsel for a union. Laura Juran, explains, “One of the key differences about being in-house is that it actually feels different, because rather than feeling like you’re the hired gun, the person downstream who gets called when there’s a crisis, you are part of the team and you work a lot with people who are not lawyers on policy issues…In house, we’re more on the front end of thinking about things, we see issues percolating and we think about if there is a particular issue that needs to be litigated.” 

Advantages and Disadvantages

Given the inherently political nature of unions, one significant disadvantage of working in a union is its volatility. Depending on the union, when a new general counsel is appointed by a recently elected union president, that person may choose to restructure his or her entire legal staff. In addition, union attorneys represent union members as a group first and foremost. Therefore, they are responsible for the work that is given to them by the union leaders, rather than by individual union members directly. Dealing with this type of organizational structure can be frustrating for some attorneys. 

There are, however, many advantages to practicing labor law in this setting. In general, union attorneys consider their hours to be relatively flexible. According to Sasha Shapiro ’08, “the salary and hours allow me to do the other things I want to do in life.” Like government attorneys, in-house union attorneys do not bill hours. Laura Juran has enjoyed this change since moving in-house from a firm, noting, “We did bill hours and we’d have to go back and review them. We’d have to cut time if we felt like it wasn’t fair to saddle a client with that much of a bill. Now, if I want to spend a whole day on an issue and really think it through, I have the luxury of spending that time without worrying later about having to write it off for a client.” Additionally, union attorneys value the collaborative nature of their work; many union attorneys note that they can turn to their fellow attorneys for help on cases or to alleviate their caseload when they get overwhelmed. Furthermore, because union attorneys represent one consistent client, there is a more predictable stream of work and resources. 

Nonprofits: Employment Law

Employment attorneys who work for nonprofits practice in a wide range of organizations. While some organizations concentrate solely on the advancement of employee rights, other organizations address a broader range of civil rights issues. Many legal services programs also have employment law practices. Finally, large nonprofit organizations such as universities and museums hire attorneys to work on employment issues in-house. 

“There’s a new trend towards more of a nonprofit workers center advocacy model,” explains Robert DeGregory ’04. “Where unions have failed at organizing new groups of workers because it has been too hard or too costly under the traditional labor law framework, there are other vehicles which are emerging to try to help low-wage workers in the service sector, agriculture, and elsewhere.” These worker centers, nonprofit membership organizations that unite non-union workers, are becoming an increasingly common practice option for lawyers interested in employment law. Many employment attorneys have been involved with the formation of these organizations and have also been hired to provide them with legal support and advice. Worker centers are generally funded through a combination of private grants, attorney fee awards, and government support. 

While nonprofit organizations’ levels of revenue and resources vary considerably, most nonprofits employ only a small number of attorneys to focus specifically on employment law. Lawyers who practice employment law in a nonprofit setting deal with a diverse set of responsibilities that include litigation, negotiation, mediation, advocacy, organizing, and general legal advising.

Advantages and Disadvantages

One of the frustrations of practicing employment law within the nonprofit sector is that attorneys are often required to confine their work to the particular types of cases their organization has been funded to address. In the same vein, the amount of resources that organizations have at any given time will often dictate the amount of litigation that their attorneys are able to take on.

However, the many advantages of working for a nonprofit often make it an attractive practice setting for employment lawyers.

According to Shelley Gregory ’01, “Employers tend to be work-life balance focused.” Additionally, because there is frequently leaner staffing and less hierarchy in nonprofits, young attorneys find that they have a great deal of responsibility early on, which allows them to gain significant and valuable experience very quickly. Attorneys are also often involved with community advocacy and are required to think of and pursue creative ways of promoting policy initiatives and legislation. 

Attorneys working in nonprofit organizations appreciate that their work has the capacity to provide historically disenfranchised groups with opportunities for social and economic advancement. One of the reasons why Greg Schell ’79 loves his job as a legal services attorney is that, “You always know that your client is the good guy and that the work that you’re doing is supporting people who really need and deserve your help.” Cyrus Mehri, founding partner of Mehri and Skalet, PPLC, a private public-interest firm that litigates plaintiff-side employment cases, also comments that he likes “the fact that [nonprofits] are empowering people and giving people access to courts that wouldn’t otherwise have it.” 

Working for a nonprofit organization often allows employment attorneys to pursue cases that have a nation-wide impact. Indeed, specialized employment nonprofits may be able to secure both the funding and time necessary to think strategically and do impact litigation. Finally, attorneys working in nonprofits find value in communicating with attorneys doing similar work across the country and are grateful that nonprofit organizations are often collaborative.

Private Public Interest Firms: Labor and Employment Law

Many lawyers practice union-side labor law and plaintiff-side employment law in private firms. Although there is not a determinative factor that characterizes a private firm as being a “private public interest law firm,” there are many for-profit firms that pride themselves on the significant portion of public interest work that they perform. A number of HLS grads now working in labor and employment law note that they have been pleasantly surprised by the exciting labor and employment dockets at a growing number of private public-interest firms across the country. Indeed, many labor law firms and plaintiff-side employment law firms perform work that most students would consider “public interest” oriented. Most of these firms are small, ranging from one or two lawyers to about forty at the top end. There are typically differences of structure, ideology and relevant law between labor and employment law firms.

Unions often hire labor law firms to litigate on behalf of the union as outside counsel. Such firms attempt to maintain long-standing relationships with unions and their workers even through politically turbulent periods. As a result, attorneys working in labor firms often encounter repeat players that they interact with regularly over the course of several years. Many in-house union attorneys originally worked closely with a particular union while at a private firm before moving in-house to that same union, a sign of the strong ties that firm attorneys can form with the union leadership and members that they represent.

Plaintiff-side employment firms, on the other hand, generally represent individual workers. Attorneys working in plaintiff-side employment firms represent employees in court and undertake litigation on their behalf. Plaintiff-side employment firms may handle one or more substantive areas of employment law—discrimination, wage and hour, ERISA, and workers’ compensation.

Because attorney-client relationships are not as long-standing in employment law firms as in labor law firms, these firms may have a difficult time anticipating their caseload several years out and may not be able to hire until an immediate need presents itself. There are also many private public interest law firms that are not dedicated solely to work involving labor and employment law and instead house a small number of attorneys to focus on these issues.

Advantages and Disadvantages

One disadvantage of working in a private public interest law firm is that attorneys need to worry about the profitability of the firm. In deciding whether or not to take a case, one of the most significant considerations is whether the case is likely to benefit the firm economically. Private attorneys must generally be far more risk-averse in choosing cases than government attorneys as fees are often paid on a contingency basis, lending an element of “you eat what you kill” to plaintiff-side employment firms. For union-side labor lawyers, billing hours can be a frustrating process. Although the larger and more well-known unions are financially sturdy, Laura Juran notes that “it is very different when you know your client has very limited resources. People at corporate law firms don’t really have the concern, ‘Is GE going to be able to pay our bill?’ We have those concerns. Particularly local unions—we had local unions that couldn’t pay their bills and we had to work out payment plans.” Attorneys working in private public interest law firms also occasionally find themselves working on cases that are not entirely public-interest oriented—for example, cases involving executive contracts. Though the hours are certainly livable, attorneys in this setting can expect to work over forty hours a week, particularly when they are in trial.

Some of the advantages of working in a private public interest law firm include the significant amount of discretion attorneys have in determining which cases they would like to pursue and the ability to work on cases that are personally meaningful. Claire Prestel ’02 enjoyed the large amount of litigation she was able to do as a union-side attorney at Altshuler Berzon; because in-house union attorneys and nonprofit attorneys deal with the additional responsibilities of organizing or legislative advocacy, a private firm can be an appealing option if you would like to focus on litigation. Prestel also appreciated the fast-paced and exciting work environment, saying, “One great thing about working in a private firm is that you have a lot of variety—you have a lot of different clients coming in, different unions with different issues.” Many private public interest attorneys find that their firms have enough resources to take cases with the potential to have a major impact on the future of the law in certain areas. In addition, attorneys in private public interest law firms appreciate the direct client contact that comes with their work. According to Chuck Gilligan, a partner at O’Donoghue & O’Donoghue, LLP, a union-side labor firm, private public interest law firms provide attorneys with a “viable way to have a real life.”

Many young attorneys appreciate that private public interest law firms often offer a great deal of mentorship to young associates; while associates certainly take on much of the same level of responsibility and autonomy that young attorneys take on in other public interest settings, young attorneys in this setting generally find that they are exposed to guidance from more senior attorneys when needed. Associates also find that more senior attorneys take a great deal of pride in teaching them successful litigation skills. Collaboration is common among lawyers of varying levels of experience in this setting and there are many people for attorneys to turn to with their questions. Finally, pay tends to be higher than in the nonprofit sector and can also be more than government salaries.

International

As a result of the increasingly global economy, the international aspects of union and employee/plaintiff side law are growing and changing at a rapid pace. The expansion of international issues related to labor and employment law, which truly took off in the late 90’s, represents what is arguably the most significant way in which labor and employment markets are evolving.

Few people realize that it is an international human right to form and join trade unions, as recognized by Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Applying a human rights framework to labor issues is a relatively new mode of analysis, which means that “people in this field are in the position of expanding and shaping the parameters in ways that I don’t think is always true in other areas of work,” notes Ashwini Sukthankar ’02, a researcher and advocate in international labor rights and transnational labor regulation.

While there are a number of unions that represent workers in both Canada and the United States, Robert DeGregory ’04 explains how the synthesis of these components is still not complete: “While I was with the United Steelworkers, I was an attorney for the Pittsburgh-based ‘International Legal Department,’ however, in most practical respects we operated as the U.S. legal department. There was the separate Toronto-based Canadian legal department that handled the legal issues that arose in Canada. I understand that many international unions have largely operated in separate spheres for each country.” Yet, due to the globalization of employers, he believes that “it is necessary, for a union to have any real leverage against those employers, to be able to similarly act across borders in solidarity with workers from other countries to put pressure on the employer to convince it that it should deal more fairly with its workers. That should mean increased coordination between the Canadian and American workers already represented by the same union, where that exists, and it should also mean building global alliances with unions and workers in many other countries. Everywhere that global capital has its imprint, the labor movement must be prepared to follow.” Due to this up-and-coming area of practice, there is likely to be an increased demand for graduates who understand transnational or comparative law.

There are a substantial number of issue areas for law school graduates interested in international labor rights. Indeed, Sukthankar points out that “almost every cross-border issue, whether it involves the movement of goods, services or people, has a labor dimension that tends to go ignored or under-explored.” She notes, “Very little of the work feels strictly legal…to the extent that there is litigation involved in the work, it is really soft law,” Sukthankar says. However, an international labor lawyer might draft complaints to the International Labor Organization’s Committee on Freedom of Association on behalf of unions, to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development stating violations of the guidelines with respect to workers’ rights, or to the Commission for Labor Cooperation, a body created through the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) side agreement on labor. As for actually litigating in court, an attorney might go to the European Court of Human Rights or the European Court of Justice on issues that arise when workers cross borders or to address the effects on workers of international trade in the European Union.

The experiences of Cathleen Caron, the founder and executive director of Global Workers Justice Alliance, illustrate not only another option for integrating litigation into international labor work but also how social entrepreneurship has and will continue to play a large role in protecting workers on the international level. While litigating class actions on behalf of exploited farmworkers at the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Florida, Caron noticed that many farmworkers were never able to recover the wages won in court because they returned to their home countries. Now, “Global Workers executes portable justice, the right and ability of transnational migrant workers to access justice in the countries of employment even after they have departed for their home countries, primarily through a network of human rights organization. Connecting lawyers in the United States to lawyers in Mexico and Guatemala to ensure that workers who go home can still move their cases forward in U.S. courts is incredibly rewarding.”

Work Types

Attorneys working in different practice settings within the fields of union and employee/plaintiff side law may take on a variety of responsibilities. While much of the work that labor attorneys perform is similar in nature to the work carried out by employment law attorneys, including litigation, negotiation, mediation, advocacy, organizing, regulatory work, and legal advising, labor attorneys historically have done more organizing and advising work due to their relationship with unions. However, some nonprofits that focus on workers’ rights also work with organizers. It is important to identify the setting that will provide you with the mix of work that you are looking for in a career.

Litigation

Litigation often constitutes a significant component of public interest labor and employment practice. A litigating attorney’s responsibilities can range from complex research to arguing before judges and/or juries in trial and appellate courts to drafting pleadings, briefs, and motions. In-house union lawyers typically outsource their actual litigation to labor law firm lawyers.

Many attorneys who practice labor law represent unions as a whole, as opposed to their individual members, in court proceedings. However, labor lawyers often represent union members before the NLRB, state counterparts of the NLRB, or other forums as specified by collective bargaining agreements. In-house union attorneys will generally litigate less than union-side attorneys at private firms. Employment lawyers represent individual employees and groups of non-union workers in class-action cases. The percentage of an attorney’s practice that is devoted to litigation will depend on his or her caseload at any given time and the level of resources at his or her disposal.

Alternative Dispute Resolution: Arbitration, Negotiation and Mediation

Arbitration, negotiation, and mediation are another set of labor and employment practices. While the roles that attorneys play in alternate dispute resolution may vary in each subsection of the field, most of the work is centered on issues arising under contracts between employees and their employers.

In labor law, alternative dispute resolution often involves arbitration between unions and employers, specifically in contract cases related to breach of the collective bargaining agreement. Arbitration is a legal procedure for the resolution of disputes outside of the court system, although the skills needed for arbitration and the process itself are quite similar to litigation. Under arbitration, the parties agree to refer a dispute to one or more independent persons (either an “arbitrator” or “panel of arbitrators”) by whose decision they agree to be bound. In collective bargaining agreements, the union and the employer will frequently agree to arbitration for some issues, as well as to a method of selecting arbitrators (i.e. through the American Arbitration Association, the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service, etc.). Whenever there is an alleged breach of contract, they then try the case before an arbitrator. Common breaches that are addressed under arbitration include disciplinary actions that are not for “just cause” (collective bargaining agreements typically contain provisions which prohibit employers from disciplining an employee unless there is a legitimate reason for doing so).

Negotiation involves two parties seeking to reach an agreement. Employment or labor law attorneys may assist in these negotiation proceedings by reading through a legal document (for example, a contract) and explaining its provisions to an employee or working with an employee to negotiate a better settlement for a severance package. Attorneys working in unions or outside counsel for unions may be involved in negotiating collective bargaining agreements between unions and management. Although labor attorneys working in private-public interest firms may undertake these types of negotiations for their union clients, unions often handle these negotiations in-house. Whether in unions, nonprofits, or private firms, attorneys also negotiate settlements of their clients’ cases.

Finally, mediation is a similar process to negotiation but involves a “mediator,” a neutral third party facilitating discussion. Lawyers may serve as mediators for labor and employment disputes, including issues of sexual harassment, gender identity discrimination, wrongful termination, and breach of employment contract. Labor and employment lawyers often participate in mediation when trying to settle cases on behalf of their clients. As opposed to litigation, mediation and negotiation allow for confidentiality and may help reach a resolution in a relatively short period of time compared to the years a labor or employment case can spend in the court system.

Organizing

Both labor lawyers and employment lawyers are involved, to varying degrees, in organizing efforts. Organizing or working directly with organizers is a critical component of many labor lawyers’ work. As organizers, labor attorneys help to solidify or expand union membership. Robert DeGregory ’04 recalls that with the United Steelworkers, a large union that was active in organizing new workers, “there were always new organizing drives, and collective bargain agreements being negotiated with new employers, as well as legal disputes that arose from that organizing and collective bargaining.”

By comparison, the NHLPA “has successfully organized its core industry – the National Hockey League, but we are certainly supportive of our fellow athletes in other sports who strive to obtain similar rights to collective representation and the benefits that flow therefrom.” In larger unions, like the Steelworkers or SEIU, much of this organizing work is done by non-legal staff or members, and attorneys play a supporting role in researching issues and advising when needed. In addition, attorneys may meet with union leaders or give presentations to union members about a particular issue that they feel is in the best interest of the union to address (i.e. increasing dues, raising strike funds, etc.). This type of organizing requires that attorneys convince unions of the reasons why the implementation of a particular provision is essential to their ability to successfully enforce their collective bargaining rights.

Though it is certainly not as common in employment law practice as it is in labor law practice, organizing or working with organizers is another type of work that employment lawyers perform. Worker centers—membership organizations composed of non-union workers—are becoming more common, and employment lawyers are often involved in their formation. Employment lawyers have aided centers in their attempts to solidify or expand upon membership, and have advised the leaders of these organizations of their legal rights and the laws and regulations critical to the enforcement of their members’ rights. The organizing work that labor and employment attorneys undertake often allows them to exhibit a certain level of influence over both well-established and newly forming organizations.

Policy Advocacy

Legislative and regulatory advocacy is another interesting and dynamic type of work that is performed by both labor and employment attorneys. Attorneys undertaking this type of work assume a variety of responsibilities with an aim towards successfully lobbying legislative and regulatory bodies to adopt particular laws and policies. Some of these responsibilities include meeting directly with individuals who are affected by workplace issues, gauging their needs, performing complex research on the relevant issues and existing laws and regulations applicable to these issues, reviewing past and present cases, drafting proposals for legislative and regulatory review, and submitting comments on draft legislation or regulations. Labor lawyers may do policy advocacy work in-house for a union or occasionally at a private public-interest firm on behalf of a union. Employment lawyers are most likely to find this type of work at a nonprofit organization.

Though time-consuming and often slow-moving, advocacy work can be particularly meaningful for labor and employment attorneys because it allows them to work towards a broader vision of the law and working towards achieving legal reform.

Rulemaking and Regulatory Enforcement

Labor and employment lawyers working for government agencies are frequently involved in two very important agency functions: rulemaking and regulatory enforcement. In connection with these functions, attorneys may draft regulations related to labor and employment issues and provide legal counsel to agency staff and administrative officials to make sure the agency’s proposed rules are lawful, logical, and substantively correct.

Attorneys may also take part in organizing regulatory hearings on labor and employment issues and may review public comments on proposed regulations. In some cases, attorneys may represent the agency in relevant administrative hearings, or resolve disputes between their agency and parties affected by the agency’s regulations. If the agency has litigating authority, labor and employment attorneys may also prosecute those who violate agency regulations or defend agency regulatory action when it is challenged in state or federal court.

Legal Advising

Labor and employment attorneys offer legal advice to their clients on a wide variety of issues, depending on the practice setting in which they work. For example, labor lawyers working for unions may advise the union about what types of legal action (strike, etc.) would be most appropriate under a particular set of circumstances, while labor lawyers working for a government agency may advise agency officials on whether they have the authority to regulate a specific type of workplace conduct.

Employment lawyers also provide legal advice to individual workers on diverse issues ranging from the laws and regulations pertaining to background checks to the legal requirements necessary to make a discrimination claim.

Planning Your Career

Assess Your Prior Experience

Though it is not essential to landing a job in the field, employers look favorably upon pre-law school work related to labor or employment law,. Think about your college, law school, volunteer, and prior work experience and try to highlight any involvement you have had with labor or employment issues, no matter how distant the connection. Did any of this work spark your interest in labor or employment law? If you do not feel that you have any prior connection to the field, begin thinking about how you can develop a solid track record in law school that will allow you to demonstrate to future employers that your passion and interest in the field is well thought out and longstanding.

Analyze Your Goals

There are many important factors to consider when thinking about your career. You will have to make decisions on the issue areas, practice settings, and work types that interest you. Ideally, you will be able to pursue the particular issue area that most excites you, the practice setting that best fits you, and the type of work that is most satisfying to you. However, because there is good deal of competition for post-graduate positions, it is advantageous to decide which of the components above you are more or less flexible about. In doing so, be sure to think broadly about the principles and issues that you’re really concerned with (i.e. workers rights, civil rights issues in general, etc.).

Location is another important factor to consider when applying for jobs. When researching summer internships and post-graduate employment options, be mindful of the demographics of the area in which an organization is located and think about whether or not working with or for those clients will allow you to achieve your career goals. To facilitate the search process, many of the databases outlined below will allow you to search for particular issue areas, practice settings, work types, and geographic locations.

Research the World of Labor and Employment Law

Learn as much as you can about the various organizations that hire attorneys to handle labor and employment law issues. Begin by looking through the organizations, fellowships, and websites listed at the end of this guide. One way to learn more about the field is by setting up informational interviews with lawyers in organizations that are of particular interest to you. This process will not only allow you to become increasingly more informed about the local job market, but it will also heighten your visibility in the field and prepare you for the interview process ahead.

Students can also gain perspective on union culture by attending a union meeting. Chuck Gilligan comments, “When you’re standing in a union meeting among hundreds of workers with their contracts in their hands, you really get an idea of what it’s like.” When it comes to understanding the struggles and concerns of both union and non-union workers, there is really no substitute for personal experience.

Hone Your Skills

There are a few general skills that labor and employment attorneys repeatedly point to as specific qualifications that have helped them achieve success in their careers. The first of these skills is the ability to write clearly and effectively. According to Chuck Gilligan, “Your ability to say what you want in as few words as possible with a fair amount of discipline towards cogency and clarity as opposed to jargon is an extremely important skill to have in the field.” It is essential that attorneys in this field are able to convey complex information in the most straightforward way possible, particularly as most labor and employment attorneys interact with a broad array of people on a daily basis, such as union members and leaders, migrant workers, government agency employees, and legislators. It is also important to be able to listen carefully to your client’s needs (or the needs of the group that you are representing) and try to understand their experiences and problems. These skills can be learned in the classroom, in working for clinics, and through your law school job experiences.

Use Your Time in Law School Wisely

Employers will look for a strong demonstrated interest in labor or employment law. You can show this interest by interning with an organization undertaking labor or employment law work, writing relevant articles for journals and/or newspapers, joining related student organizations, taking courses focused on labor and employment law issues, and/or participating in a clinic dealing with labor or employment issues. Your ability to prove that you are confident and passionate about pursuing labor and employment work will likely play a factor in the kinds of jobs you are able to land.

Summer jobs and term-time internships are also critical to demonstrating a commitment to the field of labor and employment law and the particular issue or set of issues that you are interested in. Many public interest organizations will look to hire students who have performed public service work during law school, and in particular, students who have spent at least one summer in a public interest setting. These internships will also allow you to figure out whether or not you like the fields of labor and employment law. In addition, you can try different practice settings to see, for example, whether you prefer to work at a firm or at a nonprofit, as well as what type of work appeals to you.

Aaron Halegua ’09 describes the qualifications that have helped him advance in the field as follows: “I had a lot of experience in the type of work that I wanted to do, a compelling story of why I wanted to do it, knowledge of the landscape of people doing this type of work already, and knowledge about my clients and experience in working with this population.”

To remain competitive for most post-graduate public interest positions in the labor and employment field, it is critical that you spend at least one summer or a couple of clinical placements working at an organization specifically focused on labor and employment issues (i.e. not just any public service placement). Labor law attorneys advise that students interested in pursuing a career in labor law should try to work with or for a union at some point during their law school career, particularly if they do not have prior union experience.

There are several mechanisms that can help students find (and in one case be placed with) summer public interest labor law jobs:

• The Peggy Browning Fund – the Peggy Browning Fund provides paid summer fellowships for first and second-year students at participating law schools to work at union-side law firms, nonprofits, unions and government agencies.
• AFL-CIO Law Student Union Summer – This program provides a paid summer internship for law students to work with local unions across the country on organizing campaigns. The internship starts with a training in mid-June. Interns are then placed with unions for an internship that “combines front-line, labor-related public interest legal work with grassroots organizing in ongoing campaigns by AFL-CIO-affiliated unions throughout the country. In addition to legal research and writing, LSUS interns are involved in community outreach, member mobilization, corporate and other non-legal research, legislative campaigns and general litigation.”

HLS students are fortunate that, thanks to guaranteed summer funding, you do not have to rely on paid summer positions or external fellowships and can apply to the wide range of employers who are not participating in the formal programs listed above.

Develop a Network of Contacts

The stronger the relationships you form during law school (through your internships, clinical placements, faculty, and the HLS alumni network), the more likely you are to be able to land a job doing what you want to do right out of law school. If you meet someone who has followed a career path that appeals to you, try to ask them as many questions as you can about how they got where they are and what most helped them along the way.

It can also be helpful to become involved with attorney associations and bar committees focused on labor and employment issues. Joining these types of organizations will facilitate the process of meeting people who do what you aspire to do, and will provide you with structured events during which you will be able to speak with member attorneys.

The most popular types of these organizations in the fields of labor and employment law are:

• The ABA Labor and Employment Law Section
• The National Employment Law Association
• The Labor and Employee committees of city Bar Associations and the state and local chapters of NELA
• The National Lawyers Guild

The student rates of these organizations typically make them relatively affordable for law students.

The annual conference of the Peggy Browning Fund also offers great networking opportunities.

Postgraduate Search Tools

Although networking is a critical part of the job search, there are a number of places you can look for organizations or job postings and fellowships to help you get launched.

Job postings:

• Hiring Hall – Monthly online job postings published by the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance. These postings are typically included in the OPIA jobs database. You can also post your resume in the ULA Resume Bank if a ULA attorney or affiliated professor sponsors you.
• Union Job Clearinghouse – Typically not legal jobs but will sometimes post attorney positions.
• PSJD – This database, hosted by the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), is the leading database of public interest organizations and jobs.
• USAJOBS – This is the centralized site for federal government jobs.
• Arizona Guide – the University of Arizona’s Government Honors Program and Internship Handbook is a valuable resource for summer and postgraduate positions primarily in the federal government but it also contains state and local government listings as well.

Organizational listings:

• OPIA’s Private Public Interest Law and Plaintiffs’ Firm Guide – This Guide, updated annually, has a directory of public interest firms that includes labor law and employment law firms.

Alternate Options

If you are unable to land a job in union and employee/plaintiff side law directly out of law school, you should not give up on the idea of entering the field. Continue to maintain the relationships you formed during law school with labor and employment attorneys, and try to get any kind of related experience possible.

Doing any kind of legal services work or work on First Amendment matters or constitutional rights will give you some exposure to labor and employment issues. Because litigation often constitutes a significant component of public interest labor and employment practice, clerkships also offer invaluable experience to budding labor and employment lawyers. If your workplace is unionized, be sure to join the union and consider becoming active in it.

One legal services option is to be an attorney who provides prepaid legal services to a particular union chapter. Prepaid legal services include family law, real estate/housing, wills and estate planning, traffic violations and other areas of civil law rather than actual labor and employment law. But providing union members with legal services can obviously provide great exposure to a network of union members and staff.

Alternatively, to gain experience in the field, Cyrus Mehri recommends community organizing and advocacy work. According to Mr. Mehri, he is a much better lawyer because of the non-legal work he did as an organizer.

Personal Narratives

Note that all personal narratives in this Guide reflect titles that were current when the narratives were collected.

Selected Organizations

Selected Fellowships

Listed below are a variety of traditional labor and employment fellowships as well as a number of public interest fellowships that you many not immediately recognize as opportunities for pursuing labor and employment law. However, due to the range of issues that come together within this field, including discrimination, disability rights, health law, elder law and immigration law, we hope this list will encourage you to explore creative options for working in labor and employment law. Be advised that availability and application deadlines for these fellowships vary year to year, so check the listed websites for the most up-to-date information.

Selected Websites

Below are some of the more useful sites on labor and employment law issues. The sites provide both information and links to other organizations of interest. Remember that many of the sites listed in the Selected Organizations section are also valuable resources on labor and employment law.

Acknowledgements

This guide would not have been possible without the thoughtful insights gathered through nearly 40 interviews with labor and employment attorneys. Profound thanks are due to the following individuals for sharing their personal stories and rich knowledge of the field: Robin Alexander, Alison Asarnow, Steve Berzon, Cathleen Caron, Robert DeGregory, Elizabeth Drake, Edward Eitches, Terri Gerstein, Chuck Gilligan, Norm Gleichman, Shelley Gregory, Aaron Halegua, Piper Hoffman, Laura Juran, Lela Klein, Sophia Lai, Cyrus Mehri, ReNika Moore, Claire Prestel, Jose Rodriguez, JJ Rosenbaum, Sasha Shapiro, Hara Sherman, Summer Smith, Doug Stevick, Ashwini Sukthankar, Judith Starr, Julie Su, Anand Swaminathan, Daniel Vail, Grayson Walker, and Michelle Yau.

We are particularly grateful to Patricia Kakelec, Greg Schell and Shannon Liss-Riordan, for providing personal narratives, and to Claire Prestel for both being interviewed and reviewing the labor sections of the guide respectively.

Many thanks to Professor Ben Sachs for contributing his expertise in labor and employment law in editing this guide. Much gratitude is due to Catherine Pattanayak and Kirsten Bermingham for their careful editing and spot-on comments. Finally, thanks to Alexa Shabecoff for envisioning this guide and seeing it through to the finish with thoughtful editing and supervision.

Written by: Kyle Edwards & Sarah Robinson, Summer Fellows