About this practice
Designing market-competitive benefits and compensation strategies to maximize talent retention and enhance economic responsiveness is challenging — especially when wanting to comply with increasingly complex related regulatory requirements. That’s why so many leading public and nonprofit organizations rely on Jackson Lewis. Our Employee Benefits practice group handles a full spectrum of transactional, regulatory and litigation benefit law matters for a diverse mix of business clients on a nationwide basis. From tax-qualified contributory and pension plans to executive compensation, ESOPS, corporate transactions, workforce reductions and more. We approach even the most technical and complex benefit law questions with an eye toward preventive strategies — minimizing the likelihood of liabilities associated with benefit claims, litigation and enforcement matters — and practical solutions.
Clients
- Employers + organizations: Public and nonprofit, all sizes, emerging and established, across all industries
- Plan sponsors, plan fiduciaries and benefit plans Insurers
- Plan administrators and third-party administrators
- Institutional and individual trustees, corporate officers and directors and other parties and investors (i.e., PE groups)
- Selling shareholders, public and private/family-held corporations, bank holding corporations
Core capabilities
We provide comprehensive legal advice, counseling and representation across the following benefits issues:
- Design, administration and operation of all benefit and compensation arrangements, including compliance with ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code, and defense of benefit, fiduciary and other claims relating to plan administration, and compliance with the terms of the plan and all applicable laws.
- Tax-qualified defined contribution plans and defined benefit pension plans (including cash balance and other hybrid pension plan formulas).
- Executive compensation arrangements.
- Corporate transactions and workforce reorganizations, as well as the range of issues involved in multiemployer pension and welfare plan liabilities.
- Designing, implementing and using ESOPs in multiple transaction types, including mergers and acquisitions, estate and succession planning, hostile takeover bids, tender offers, shareholder liquidity/Section 1042 of the Internal Revenue Code tax-deferred transactions, stock re-purchases by issuers, redemptions and recapitalizations, management and leveraged buyouts, and the use of ESOPs as an acquisition strategy.
- Defense in examinations, summons proceedings, and adversary proceedings and appeals initiated under internal agency procedures by federal or state agencies and courts of specialized jurisdiction.
Cross-practice problem-solving
Benefits are an integral consideration in any employment action. We collaborate with other leading Jackson Lewis practices to bring clients comprehensive answers for better benefits outcomes.
- Disability, Leave and Health Management: Benefits-related considerations for Wellness Programs in the workplace, including COVID-19-related employment actions for furloughs, compensation decreases and other resultant changes in the workplace.
- ERISA Complex Litigation: Strategic defenses in virtually all 50 states against both mainstream ERISA litigation as well as complex benefits litigation and class actions.
- Privacy, Data and Cybersecurity: Compliance with HIPAA/HITECH Privacy and Security regulations regarding group health plans and health care providers.
- Transactional Services: Due diligence, definitive document negotiation + drafting, insurer + co-investor interface, closing/post-closing management + integration, and more across all workplace law issues implicated during corporate deals, consolidations + restructurings, and distressed situations + bankruptcies.
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