How Can Employment Lawyers Help You
Many times employers think they are treating their staff fairly in terms of employment benefits, contracts, and the like. However, employment law is very complicated and even the tiniest error, even if it is an entirely innocent event, can lead to huge penalties and expensive law cases. Even if you do not go to court, the lawyer’s bill can very quickly run to thousands of dollars. So to avoid getting into trouble with the law with the way you handle your employees make sure you talk to Albany employment lawyer before you take any employment actions with your staff.
Most companies need employment lawyers to help them in the following areas: compliance with labour, handling employee termination, and handling sexual harassment in the workplace. However, there are other areas where you will need an Albany employment lawyer too, including drafting contracts for key employees like your CEO.
If you are being sued, employment lawyers can defend you in a multitude of different cases including loss of income, punitive damages, restraint of trade restrictions, defamation of character and human rights damages.
But how do employment lawyers help you manage your staff? They can help you in many ways besides the obvious contracts. For example, they can draft an employee handbook, you can, with their help, set expectations for what employees should do at work and how they should behave. This can prevent misunderstanding with your staff and, in effect, prevent lawsuits.
From your end, you will need know what you can or cannot do as an employee, thus preventing any action that might lead to a legal case with their lawyer.
If you search online, you will see that there are many labour lawyers or employment lawyers. If you need one, make sure to narrow your search to include the name of your local area.
How do you choose an employment lawyer? We really think that a lawyer is only as good as his or her experience in the field. And so, as you are “shopping” for lawyers, make sure to ask about their experience. Ask questions about specific cases that they have handled before. An employment lawyer must have experience in this very complex field.
In this day and age, a boss can be sued or face legal action for many different reasons, including disability insurance disputes, harassment, bullying, discrimination, human rights violations, and wrongful or unjust dismissal. Make sure that the lawyer you hire has experience in all of those cases.
If you are only starting to build a company, it would be a good idea to retain a lawyer for several months until your human resources department has been set up and you already have an employee handbook in place. You can hire the lawyer again if you are being sued.
It is always tempting to hire the first lawyer you see in the search engine results, however, the truth is that the best lawyers are not necessarily found on Google. That said, you might want to read the different human resource magazines and see which lawyers constantly land in the best of the best list. They may be more expensive but you do get what you pay for, and what you get is peace of mind knowing that you’re in good hands.
One of the biggest and most experienced employment lawyers on the North Shore is McVeagh Fleming. You can call them for an initial chat about your situation.