Advice & Counseling

Ascent’s Employment Practice spans the entire employee lifecycle – from hiring to termination and everything in between.  Ascent’s attorneys are also tried, true, and highly successful employment and benefits related litigators and trial attorneys.

Advice and Counsel and Workplace Investigations

Our Employment Practice starts with advice and counsel. We firmly believe in the adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

We provide practical, digestible, and business-focused employment counsel—both nationwide and state specific—that considers each client’s risk tolerance, cultural realities, existing precedents, operational bandwidth, and budget. We partner with clients of all sizes, big and small, public and private, in various industries to design and implement employment policies and procedures, training programs and initiatives, including diversity and inclusion, that facilitate the creation of positive employee relations, strengthen compliance, employee morale and productivity, and help our clients create an efficient, gratifying, and respectful workplace built on a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture.

We regularly advise our clients on the following non-exhaustive list of issues:

  • Hiring and onboarding strategic guidance

  • Background checks – Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), state law guidance and restrictions, EEOC guidance, conviction/arrest record restrictions

  • Wage and hour – Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state laws and regulations

  • Pay equity – internal pay equity audits and compensation analyses under the attorney-client privilege

  • Federal government contractor compliance – affirmative action plans and OFCCP audit defense

  • Workplace investigations and related guidance

  • Reductions-in-force, layoffs, and furloughs – WARN notice obligations, statistical adverse impact analyses, and compliant severance programs and agreements

  • Restrictive covenants – strategic drafting of non-compete, non-solicitation, and other trade secret protection agreements, enforcement assessments, and enforcement litigation

  • Navigating leave of absence challenges – FMLA, workers’ compensation, and ADA leave-related accommodations

  • Job-related accommodations and ADA interactive process

  • ADA accessibility and public accommodations

  • Paid sick leave laws and PTO obligations

  • Workplace violence-related policies and procedures, trainings, and emergency response protocols