Welcome to Labor of Law. We take a look this week at some of the technology tools big firms are using to keep up with the ever more complex regulatory landscape. We also caught up with the head of the NFL players' union for what's going on in his arena. Plus: there's a lot of talk about those unsealed documents in a Microsoft class action. Scroll down for latest moves and who got the work.

I'm Erin Mulvaney in Washington, D.C., covering labor and employment from the Swamp to Silicon Valley. Follow this weekly newsletter for the latest analysis and happenings. If you have a story idea, feedback or just want to say hi, I'm at [email protected] and on Twitter @erinmulvaney.

Want to receive Labor of Law straight to your inbox? Sign up here.

 

Using Tech Tools to Navigate Workplace Rules

 

State and local governments are ever more the focus points for changes to labor law, creating compliance headaches for companies navigating the patchwork. Paid leave. Minimum wage. Right-to-work. Equal pay. Law firms and companies are designing tools to capture—and adapt to—the changes. These interactive tools are designed to help clients skip hours of long phone calls and make sure they are complying in the jurisdictions.

Jackson Lewis, Littler Mendelson and Fisher Phillips are among the firms touting tools that allow companies to perform risk-assessments or get streamlined access to new regulatory and compliance information. These firms say they are responding to the wave of state laws. This is not an exhaustive list, of course. Shoot me a note if your firm has adopted a new tool we should know about.

➤➤ Attorneys at Jackson Lewis gave me a look into a product the law firm developed, which originally was designed as a catch-all system for clients to navigate the patchwork of leave laws. The firm's WorkThruIt in-house system, in development over the last several years, offers clients information about rules and regulations including paid-leave, blood donation, breastfeeding and equal-pay.

WorkThruIt features an interactive interface and can generate comprehensive reports, minimizing the necessity of any early, hours-long discussions to work through matter-of-fact issues. The system, in place since last year, is designed to give companies and in-house counsel the power to quickly size up what's required in a given state or city.

“It's one go-to place for all the laws and information people want to have at their fingertips,” said Gregory Alvarez, a Jackson Lewis principal in New Jersey who helped launch the program.

The interface shows a map of the United States. A client can highlight a particular issue, such as paid leave laws or employee handbook requirements, and see where there are laws across the map. The details of the particular law will be laid out and within a state, a client can see that certain cities may even vary in their requirements. Generate a report to see how a company should move forward.

“The idea is not to replace a lawyer but augment the work of a lawyer so that a report comes up to a lawyer to enable them to highlight risks,” said Victor Barkalov of Jackson Lewis, who helped launch the program. “It's a springboard.”

The portal also covers immigration, minimum wage, e-verify, right-to-work, data breach laws, among various topics. Several hundred clients are already using the system, the firm said.

➤➤ Fisher Phillips in February announced a “Pay Equity Interactive Map.” The web-based tool allows visitors to explore the pay equity laws of states and major cities. The firm said the tool was “in response to the recent avalanche of pay equity legislation and the challenges facing employers working to understand and comply with the patchwork quilt of equal pay laws.”

“A number of states have already enacted robust pay equality statutes, and we expect more legislation on the horizon,” said Kathleen Caminiti, a New Jersey partner who co-chairs the firm's pay equity practice group. “Given the ever-changing legal landscape, we wanted to provide a place for companies and their counsel to readily access the relevant pay equity laws.”

➤➤ Littler Mendelson recently announced a similar product, the Pay Equity Assessment Tool built by the firm's analytics team, that uses company employment and demographic data to analyze litigation risk. A dashboard filters information by different categories. The data is generated to breakdown the statistics in charts and reports.

“The laws that are on the books currently … have some very specific requirements and defenses available to employers as to factors that could drive pay,” Denise Visconti, a Littler shareholder, told Legaltech News. Among these are seniority, shift differentials, and geography. The tool, she added, evaluates whether employee pay is being driven by such factors, or whether others are at play.

Littler was the second Am Law 100 firm to invest in a full-time analytics chief, hiring data scientist Zev Eigen. The firm in January announced its hiring of chief data analytics officer Aaron Crews to roll out more technology-based products. The firm already has a product aimed at predicting Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges and audits that determine risk of discrimination claims.

Labor Law and the NFL

 

➤➤ The National Football League's annual scouting event, basically the main job interview fair for prospects hoping to joint professional teams, came under fire when a team, which has not been disclosed, asked whether a player “likes men.” This is the latest big issue where the labor has intersected with the football field.

We looked at some of the legal issues in play in this piece at The National Law Journal. “There are a lot of ways companies are working toward broader goals of diversifying the workplace. But it's risky to actually ask it as a question,” Sam Schwartz-Fenwick, who leads the LGBT Affinity Group at Seyfarth Shaw, told me. The courts are divided on whether federal protections extend to sexual orientation.

This week I spoke with DeMaurice Smith, NFL Players Association executive director, who provided insight on this recent incident and others. Stay tuned for more from Smith, who was previously a trial lawyer and litigation partner in the Washington offices of Latham & Watkins and Patton Boggs.

How Smith sees it: “People love our game, but our game takes place in a business framework and there is no reason to exempt an employer like you would in any business. Questions like that or conduct that we believe is in violation of the players' individual rights or employer rights is not something we will excuse just because we are in a football paradigm. We have a history of employers asking inappropriate questions and engaging in unlawful practices and it needs to stop.”

Check back at NLJ.com this week for my full chat with Smith…

➤➤ Meanwhile, 47 businesses, including Levi Strauss & Co, Airbnb, Microsoft Corp., and CBS Corporation, submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a federal appeals court this week in support of a man who claims a job offer was rescinded because he is gay. The case is Horton v. Midwest Geriatric Management in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Read the full amicus brief here. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and the St. Louis firm Klar, Izsak & Stenger were on the brief.

New & Notable Moves

 

➤➤ Charles H. Wilson joined Littler Mendelson as a shareholder in the Houston office. He previously served as vice chair, office managing partner at Cozen O'Connor's Houston office and was a member of the labor and employment department.

➤➤ Fisher Phillips hired Steven Alvarado as an associate in the Irvine office. Alvarado's practice focuses on employment litigation. He previously was an associate in Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith's general liability and transportation practice.

➤➤ Employment litigation attorney Lisa Hamasaki joined Ogletree Deakins as a shareholder in the San Francisco office. Hamasaki previously was a shareholder at Miller Law Group.

➤➤ Seyfarth Shaw brought on partner S. Bradley Perkins to its labor and employment team in San Francisco. Perkins focuses his practice on employee benefits fiduciary advice and litigation regarding healthcare providers. He previously was senior counsel at Pacific Maritime Association.

➤➤ Bradley Schwan joined Littler as a shareholder in its Los Angeles and Orange County offices. His practice focuses on class action litigation matters. Previously, Schwan was in the labor and employment group at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Around The Water Cooler

 

Inside Unsealed Documents in Microsoft Gender Discrimination Case
 “This is one of the oldest and most venerable companies in the tech space,” said Anne Shaver of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, a lead attorney for the female Microsoft employees. “My sense is that this case is being watched as a talisman: Can companies still be held accountable for discrimination in a class action?” The firm Outten & Golden also represent the women.
[National Law Journal]

'Troubling' Morgan Lewis Conduct, but Firm Skirts Disqualification
“Morgan Lewis apologizes to the court for allowing this issue to arise,” partner Jason Mills told U.S. District Judge William Alsup, presiding over a wage-and-hour class action. [The Recorder]

Boeing Case Tested by Labor Board Conflict Questions
 “There is at least the appearance of a conflict when the case involves a company that is a client that your firm is making money off of,” David Rosenfeld, a lawyer for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, told Bloomberg Law. “These are two very important cases and I can't believe that somebody from those clients didn't consult him.” [Bloomberg BNA]

Ex-Big Law Associate Who Blew Whistle on Gender Bias Finds New Home
“My attitude toward it was kind of like, if they're not interested in looking at the long-term when they're meeting me and all they can see is a pregnant woman and they don't want to work with me, then that is not a place I want to work,” said the associate, Kristen Jarvis Johnson, now at Taylor & Associates, where she focuses on civil litigation. [American Lawyer]

Protecting Employee Mobility and Negative Trade Secrets
Maxwell V. Pritt of Boies Schiller Flexner writes: “When Judge William Alsup asked the lawyers in Waymo v. Uber—the recent showdown over self-driving car technology—if engineers really had to get lobotomies before going to their next job, he wasn't just asking if they had to “forget” what makes their former employers' technology work. He was also asking if they had to forget what did not work for their former employers.” [The Recorder]

Car Wash Mogul Cited for Cheating 700 Workers and Destroying Evidence
“An unusual wage theft case unfolding in a Santa Ana federal court offers a dark picture of the car wash mogul's businesses and raises ethical issues concerning his lawyers at Littler Mendelson, the nation's largest management-side employment firm.” [Orange County Register]

Are Wage Gains Picking Up? Stalling? Questionable Data Makes It Hard to Say
“We have trouble measuring any of these things,” said Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University and for the job-search site Indeed. “This is definitely one of those situations where you can feed in the data and get out whatever response you're looking for.” [New York Times]

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading. Shoot me a note with tips and suggestions: [email protected]