Law360 Selects Seyfarth Shaw’s Labor & Employment Practice as 2011 Practice Group of the Year

Contact:  Ivette Delgado, Senior Public Relations Associate
(212) 218-5273, idelgado@seyfarth.com

CHICAGO (January 10, 2012) — Leading law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP is pleased to announce its Labor & Employment group was recently selected by Law360 as a 2011 “Practice Group of the Year.”

Chair of Seyfarth’s Labor & Employment Group, Lisa Damon, Chair of the firm’s Complex Discrimination Litigation Group, Camille Olson and Co-chair of the firm’s Class Action Group, Gerald Maatman, were quoted in a Law360 article featuring the firm and its “litany of recent achievement on the employment front,” which led to Seyfarth’s inclusion in the exclusive list of winners.

According to Law360, Seyfarth was particularly noted for filing two amicus briefs which helped shape the U.S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. According to Olson, the briefs “presented the only evidence for the Supreme Court regarding centralized company culture and decentralized, nonformulaic decision-making, and whether or not it was inherently discriminatory.” Seyfarth was then the first out of the gate, as a management-side firm, to successfully employ the Dukes ruling in a Fair Labor Standards Act case.

“Making this year’s list is a further testament that our national Labor & Employment group is battle-ready and primed to win,” commented Damon, making the practice, “the best at what we do.”

Lauded for leading the way in litigation against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Maatman said, “We also believe we are representing employers in the three biggest EEOC lawsuits presently pending in the U.S. Employers are seeking us out to oppose the Commission in light of our track record of success in these cases. When there's a very tough case, we get called.”

Also of significance was the firm’s victory in the high-profile litigation relating to protection of client Hewlett-Packard’s trade secrets on the move of CEO Mark Hurd to Oracle, which involved work by Seyfarth’s Trade Secrets attorneys Mike Wexler and Robert Milligan, with HP's go to Seyfarth attorneys, litigators Camille Olson and Richard Lapp. Seyfarth was also selected for its successes in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act class action, wage-and-hour class actions and plaintiff’s class actions.

With more than 550 law firm submissions received for the series of awards, Law360 editors named Seyfarth  one of five recognized firms in the “Employment Group” category. Winners were chosen based on the impact, size, complexity and the number of significant, large or complex cases won by the firm. Only matters taking place between December 1, 2010 and December 1, 2011 were considered. Click here to read the full article.

Seyfarth Shaw has over 750 attorneys located in 10 offices throughout the United States, including: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Sacramento, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., as well as internationally in London. Seyfarth Shaw provides a broad range of legal services in the areas of labor and employment, employee benefits, litigation, corporate and real estate. The firm’s clients include over 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, and our practice reflects virtually every industry and segment of the economy. For more information, please visit www.seyfarth.com .