Employment Lawyer Advice for Workplace Disputes

Common Workplace Disputes That Require an Employment Lawyer

Most people spend more time at work than anywhere else so when things go bad with an employer it can feel like your whole life is falling apart and an employment lawyer is the person who can tell you whether what is happening to you is actually illegal or just unfair because those are two very different things under the law. Discrimination is the biggest category of cases an employment lawyer handles and it covers adverse treatment based on race sex age religion disability national origin and other protected characteristics but you have to understand that not every bad boss or unfair decision is discrimination in the legal sense. An employment lawyer also handles wrongful termination cases where someone was fired for an illegal reason like retaliation for reporting sexual harassment or for filing a workers compensation lawyer claim after getting hurt on the job or for being a whistleblower who reported safety violations or financial fraud. Wage and hour disputes are another major area where an employment lawyer gets involved including cases where employers are misclassifying workers as exempt from overtime when they should be getting time and a half or misclassifying employees as independent contractors to avoid paying payroll taxes and benefits. An employment lawyer also represents people in negotiating severance agreements and separation packages and once you sign that release you are giving up your right to sue so having an employment lawyer review the agreement before you sign is absolutely critical. Workplace harassment and hostile work environment claims require specific evidence that an employment lawyer knows how to gather and present and the legal standard is not just that someone was mean or inappropriate but that the conduct was severe or pervasive enough to alter the conditions of your employment.

How an Employment Lawyer Documents Your Case for Maximum Leverage

The documentation side of an employment lawyer case is where most workers drop the ball because they do not start keeping records until after they have already been fired or quit and by then they have lost access to all the emails and internal communications that would have proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt. An employment lawyer will tell you to start a contemporaneous journal the moment something problematic starts happening at work with dates times who said what and who else witnessed it because a detailed journal kept in real time is way more persuasive evidence than your memory of events six months later. Save every email and text message related to the dispute because an employment lawyer will use those communications to establish a timeline and show that management was aware of the problem but failed to take appropriate action. An employment lawyer will also help you file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the state equivalent because in most discrimination cases you have to exhaust your administrative remedies by filing with the EEOC before you can file a lawsuit in federal court. The damages in an employment lawyer case can include back pay front pay emotional distress damages and in some cases punitive damages if the employer’s conduct was particularly egregious and an employment lawyer will calculate what your case is actually worth based on your salary your lost benefits and the impact on your career trajectory. If you are also dealing with other legal issues at the same time like needing a bankruptcy attorney because the lost income has put you in a financial hole or working with tax relief help services on tax debt help because you had to cash out retirement accounts to survive an employment lawyer can coordinate with those other professionals to make sure all the pieces of your financial recovery are working together.