Ethical Issues for Employment Lawyers

This program will cover some of the common challenges employment attorneys address in three contexts: 

 

• Transactional/advisory employment law practice

• Employment litigation

• Conducting workplace investigations.

 

This program will address:

 

• The ethical obligations under the ABA Model Rules in relation to representing multiple parties – as in-house counsel, in transactional matters, and in litigation. (Model Rules 1.0, 1.7, 1.8, 1.13, 1.8, 4.2 and 4.3)

• Ethical obligations when clients engage in self-help in discovery, in ensuring evidence is preserved, in gathering and preserving information on social media, and when conducting electronic discovery (Model Rules 1.1, 3.3, 3.4, 4.2, 4.4, 5.1, and 5.3).

• Considerations of impartiality, thoroughness and appropriateness throughout a workplace investigation. (Model Rules 1.7, 1.13 and 4.3)

 

Tracey I. Levy is the Founding Member of Levy Employment Law, LLC, and annually has been recognized by Super Lawyers for the New York Metro area since 2016. Offering clients the benefit of more than 25 years of legal and employee relations experience, Tracey guides managers and in-house counsel through the full employee life-cycle, providing practical advice on workplace-related issues concerning employee performance, requests for leave or other accommodations, worker classification, and managing employee concerns. Tracey is regularly called upon to serve as an outside, neutral investigator of employee complaints, particularly for matters involving senior executives, HR professionals, and other complex situations.  Tracey enjoys the intricacies of designing HR policies and agreements that are legally-compliant but written in clear language that is consistent with an organization’s culture.  Tracey also represents organizations in the initial stages of responding to administrative inquiries and complaints filed with the EEOC, state and local human rights agencies, and the federal and state departments of labor.

 

Tracey’s clients range from small consulting firms to Fortune 500 companies, as well as individuals, from a diverse range of industries, with a particular focus serving financial services firms, not-for-profits, media companies, and skilled service businesses.  Tracey’s not-for-profit clients include social services organizations, religious institutions, universities, and arts organizations.  Tracey is strongly committed to supporting the community through volunteer services, including providing employment law advice on a pro bono basis for not-for-profit organizations through the Pro Bono Partnership, for which she was selected as one of its Volunteers of the Year for 2020, and serving as a member of the board of Feeding Westchester.

 

As a complement to her investigator role, Tracey founded an affiliate business, Impact Workplace Training, LLC, in 2020 through which she trains employees and managers, both in group and individual settings, on respectful workplace behavior, effective performance management, hiring considerations, and navigating the reasonable accommodation process.  Since 2015, Tracey has served as an Educator-Professional Programs with the Scheinman Institute at Cornell University’s ILR School in Manhattan.  Tracey has designed programs and regularly trains HR professionals and managers in a broad range of industries on subjects including equal employment opportunity and employment law, harassment prevention and conducting effective workplace investigations.

 

Prior to launching her firm Tracey was an Employee Relations Specialist with UBS AG for more than five years, where she served as the Americas HR policy lead, conducted workplace investigations and counseled managers to resolve workplace issues. Tracey was also an employment attorney with Proskauer Rose LLP for more than a third of her career, where she advised and litigated on behalf of a broad range of clients to resolve their employment law issues.

 

Tracey holds an advanced law degree from Yale Law School