Tracy M.Billows

One of Tracy’s areas of experience is leaves and accommodations. Employers must contend with myriad layers of leave and accommodation laws—federal, state, and local. Tracy provides practical, business-savvy guidance on how to comply with the various leave and accommodation laws, while also helping clients achieve their business objectives. This includes the Family and Medical Leave Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, paid sick leave, paid family leave, pregnancy leaves and accommodations, and countless other rules and regulations that employers face.

She has also conducted training for employers throughout the country and through Seyfarth at Work, including in the areas of leave management and reasonable accommodation, EEO and non-harassment, employee handbooks, codes of conduct and ethics, managing within a union environment and positive employee relations.

Tracy has defended employers in various discrimination, harassment, and retaliation single-plaintiff, multiplaintiff, and class litigations. She gets results through her unique combination of empathetic aggressiveness, practicality, and responsiveness.

As co-Managing Partner of the Chicago office and past chair of the Chicago Labor & Employment group, Tracy leads the team in Chicago  achieving excellence, increasing the team's profile through client events, publications, and other means, managing productivity and performance matters, recruitment and hiring, mentoring and coaching, strategic planning, increasing diversity and inclusion, cross-selling and marketing across the office, and administrative tasks. Tracy is also co-managing partner of the firm's Chicago office.

Tracy is a former human resources professional who spent nine years in HR in a unionized manufacturing environment. Tracy was also seconded for several months to a client as part of its in-house legal team. These experiences give Tracy the unique ability to better relate to clients and their needs, having been a client herself at one point. It also allows her be to be practical when advising on the various legal nuances and compliance options.

Tracy leverages the firm's resources in technology and process improvement to support and provide value to her clients. She uses Seyfarth Link, Survey Center, document automation, process mapping, mind mapping, and other innovative tools to increase communication and transparency—and decrease friction and pain points—between client and attorney teams during all client matters, large and small.

"My early career focus on process improvement instilled in me the imperative to always ask, 'How can this be improved or streamlined? How can we capture and replicate this process? How do we get our practices and procedures to best in class?' I bring this mindset to my work with clients to this day."