The coronavirus has significantly impacted the economy, causing millions of employers to restructure their workforce to keep their companies in business.

As corporations temporarily shut down due to shelter in place orders to stop the spread of the virus, there’s no money coming in to pay their employees. As a result, widespread furloughs and layoffs have taken place. If this hasn’t directly happened to you, chances are it has affected someone you know.

Since this is all new territory for most of us, there’s a lot of ambiguity out there surrounding terms like furlough and layoff. Sure, we’ve heard these words many times before, but as they hit closer to home it’s important to get crystal clear about what they mean.

Furlough

The guidelines for furloughed workers will vary by company, but the bottom line is an employee who is furloughed is still employed. To cut costs for the company, employees are not paid during the duration of being furloughed but they are kept on the payroll.

Furloughed employees are expected to return to their positions, although their job is not guaranteed. They could also face being asked to work in a different position than before and take a pay cut. When employees are furloughed the hours, weeks, or months they work are reduced or stop completely for a finite period of time.

Most states offer furloughed employees unemployment, in addition to eligibility to collect an extra $600 per week through July 2020, due to a Coronavirus relief law called the CARES Act. Generally, they will retain their benefits such as health insurance. They keep their rights as an employee, meaning they’re protected by discrimination laws and can’t get fired while on furlough.

As for 401k plans, furloughed employees likely won’t contribute to it with no income but they can continue to add to it once they return to work.

Layoff

Layoffs are permanent, meaning employees are let go from their jobs. While same layoffs can be temporary, the term layoff refers to an employee no longer working for their company and being taken off the payroll.

As a result, laid off employees are eligible to apply for unemployment. On top of state unemployment benefits, laid off employees can collect the extra $600 per week from the federal government. In some states, laid off employees are required to show they are actively looking for employment to receive the money, however, the COVID-19 outbreak might loosen those regulations.

Severance packages are sometimes offered to laid off employees, but they aren’t required. Severance payments can be made in a lump sum or paid in several installments. Any unused PTO is rolled into employees’ final paychecks, if state law permits.

As for health insurance benefits, laid off workers are ineligible to retain their benefits. Under COBRA, workers can opt to pay for any healthcare benefits previously covered by the employer.

Furloughs and layoffs are similar in that employees are no longer getting paid. The termination is a choice based on circumstances surrounding the employer, not job performance. However, there are stark differences in each term. Laid off workers are dismissed from their companies and no longer receive benefits or protections, while furloughed workers are still on the payroll and commonly retain their benefits.

JW Michaels & Co. is an executive search firm dedicated to serving the specialized recruiting needs of top-tier financial services, legal, technology and business institutions. Contact us about our Executive Search and Flexible Staffing Solutions today.

First and foremost, our hearts go out to all impacted by the virus, either directly or indirectly. You are not alone in this crisis. We encourage you to reach out with any questions or concerns you might have.

The Bowery Mission welcomed the JW Michals NYC team to lend a hand prepping and preparing food at their Tribeca campus. This amazing organization has served homeless and hungry New Yorkers since 1879.

Each year, The Bowery Mission provides more than 558,726 warm meals, 140,658 nights of shelter and distributes 100,334 articles of clothing. It was an honor to help. Can’t wait to do it again!

Celebrating another outstanding year, over 30 people earned a spot at the 9th annual JW Michaels & Co Atlantic City Incentive Trip, to enjoy a weekend filled with great times with great people, and tons of sweet A.C. perks. Jason Wachtel, Managing Partner of JW Michaels & Co. kicked off the casino fun with a heartfelt congratulations to the team and a toast to continued success in 2020.

In a recent press release Global law firm Hogan Lovells LLP announced that Suzanne Filippi has joined the firm’s Boston office as a corporate partner in the Life Sciences and Health Care Industry Group.

Filippi’s arrival continues the firm’s aggressive expansion in Boston following the additions of partners Kristin Connarn, and Bob Underwood, and senior counsel David Walsh earlier this year. The firm recently moved its Boston office to 125 High Street to support its expanded headcount and future growth.

“I’ve worked closely with Hogan Lovells lawyers for years and am excited to have the opportunity to play a key role in expanding the firm’s preeminent life sciences practice in Boston,” said Filippi. “The firm’s global presence and deep industry experience offers me the ideal platform to make an impact—helping life sciences companies deliver innovative medical solutions to the patients whose lives depend on them.”

Prior to joining Hogan Lovells, Filippi served as VP, Corporate Counsel Consultant at both Sage Therapeutics and Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, and as Senior Securities and M&A Counsel at TripAdvisor. At TripAdvisor, Filippi spearheaded the company’s US$9 billion spinoff from Expedia and its subsequent IPO.

“We are thrilled to welcome Suzanne. Her experience with complex corporate and M&A transactions, business acumen, and insight into the strategic objectives of companies in the life sciences industry offers uncommon advantages to our clients,” said David Gibbons, Global Head of the Corporate Practice at Hogan Lovells.

Filippi brings to Hogan Lovells deep experience handling general corporate matters and a business-minded approach to clients doing business in a range of industries and at all stages of development. In her life sciences practice, she has advised on global clinical trials, in-licensing/out-licensing and collaboration, R&D, asset portfolio strategy, pharma-covigilance, and general data protection regulation (GDPR) and privacy issues.

Click here to read the full press release

Richard Zakin, Gary Weiss and everyone at JW Michaels, congratulate Hogan Lovells and Suzanne Filippi on this exciting new chapter.

About Richard Zakin

Richard Zakin leads the partner placement group at JWM, having more than 10 years of experience in the industry placing partners and groups of partners (and even playing the lead role in potential and completed law firm mergers). Before joining the search industry, he practiced as a real estate attorney at Skadden and Morrison & Foerster and as a real estate partner with Bryan Cave and Dorsey. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia Law School (where he also received a Masters in Journalism degree.).
Click here to connect with Richard on LinkedIn.

About Gary Weiss

Gary Weiss is a Director in the Legal Group of JWM and has been in the legal search business for 14 years. Gary focuses on in house placements with a wide variety of asset managers, including private equity finds and hedge funds in addition to placing partners and associates with AmLaw 100 and boutique law firms. He also works with and has placed attorneys with a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies. Gary is a graduate of Rutgers University.
Click here to connect with Gary on LinkedIn.

There’s a new and growing region in the tech sector poised to spawn a second California-based legal services ecosystem. For those firms with a national reach that may have missed the boat on courting clients during the first tech boom in Silicon Valley, including the more traditional “Wall Street” players, the opportunity to get in on the action might be difficult to resist.

Over the past seven years, Silicon Beach – the region generally known to comprise the coastal strip that spans the north-south distance between LAX and the Santa Monica Mountains – has become home to a slew of innovative companies. A range of factors appear to be spurring this Silicon Valley defection: its capping construction on new office space; talent burnout and competition; tax and reduced rent incentives being offered by the city of Los Angeles (and its environs); and a lower cost of living. The region is now considered the 3rd biggest tech hub in the country (behind only Silicon Valley and New York City, and ahead of Austin and the Route 128 corridor), boasting more than 500 companies, including Snap, Inc, Hulu, The Honest Company, Whisper, Nasty Gal and Buzzfeed. According to a recent study by marketing agency Mediakix, which analyzed 177 companies headquartered in Los Angeles County, the area’s tech industry has an aggregate estimated value in excess of more than $155B.

Since 2012, Cooley, Orrick, Fenwick, and, just last month, Goodwin, have all planted their flags there. This would appear to give these Silicon Beach pioneers a clear advantage, at least an initial one, as, unlike Silicon Valley, where established tech-focused law firms have long been cultivating lawyers in the emerging companies’ space, the major indigenous law firms in Los Angeles aren’t known for practices tailored to that client base. With tech startups in immediate need of specialized legal talent to handle the myriad rules and regulations associated with technology today, populating a name-brand satellite office in that region with well-seasoned transactional attorneys seems to offer the promise of cultivating a thriving tech practice that can grow with the region just as those practices did in Silicon Valley when it was still a mid-stage market a decade ago.

We have several more predictions that arise from the growth of tech-oriented legal needs in Silicon Beach:

• The Los Angeles market is ripe for the kind of entertainment lawyer that can meet more holistic needs, including privacy and data security, IT issues and consumer regulations. With the increasing blur of the line between technology company and content company, there appears to be a market for the growth of a “hybrid” practice that integrates an expertise in tech with an expertise in entertainment and media, already native to the Los Angeles market.
• As more AmLaw100 firms pack LA offices with tech transactions and deal lawyers, talent rivalries will heat up and lawyers in traditional power centers like New York, Silicon Valley and Boston – all well-staffed with EC/VC specialists – will be lured to new places.
• The shifts in California may presage the emergence of more robust legal markets in several other “hip,” lower-cost cities similarly poised to spawn a market of emerging companies that seek to solidify a relationship with local counsel.
• From “Silicon Slopes” (Utah’s Salt Lake City, Provo and Odgen), which has given rise to at least five companies valued at more than $1 billion and is only a 2 hour flight from the eponymous Californian valley, to Silicon Desert (Phoenix, Arizona), which offers the combination of low living costs and high numbers of students, colleges and universities, and is currently home to 41 of Inc.’s 5000 companies (including Tuft & Needle, Carvana and GoDaddy), and to Silicon Hills (Austin, Texas), where a growing number of startups and tech companies are popping up in the rolling hills of Austin’s west side, there’s an opening for the elite firms without existing ties to Silicon Valley to make a mark by opening outposts where a practice can latch-on at an earlier stage of client access.

Times are changing, and when traditional power centers shift, you can be sure that BigLaw will follow.

ABOUT RICHARD ZAKIN

Richard Zakin leads the partner placement group at JWM, having more than 10 years of experience in the industry placing partners and groups of partners (and even playing the lead role in potential and completed law firm mergers). Before joining the search industry, he practiced as a real estate attorney at Skadden and Morrison & Foerster and as a real estate partner with Bryan Cave and Dorsey. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia Law School (where he also received a Masters in Journalism degree.)

In one of the largest lateral group departures from Kasowitz Benson Torres, 15 real estate transactional lawyers are leaving the litigation firm to join Vinson & Elkins, a major expansion for the Texas-based firm’s footprint in New York. The announcement, made by Vinson & Elkins on Monday morning, comes just over a week after ALM reported that New York-based partners Wallace Schwartz, Adam Endick and Julia Sanabria were poised to make the move. Their new firm said that they will be joined by nine associates, three counsel and three paralegals.

For Vinson & Elkins, the addition of the Kasowitz group amounts to a significant growth of its New York office, which listed 65 attorneys online as of Monday morning. Cliff Thau, who co-leads V&E’s New York office, said in a statement that he was “committed to strategically expanding here and across the firm.”

“Expanding V&E’s breadth of practice in New York is an important part of our overall growth plan, and we are committed to strategically expanding here and across the firm,” said Cliff Thau, co-head of V&E’s New York office. “The addition of this highly talented real estate team—Wally, Adam, Julia and the excellent team of lawyers joining with them­—is a great example of our focus on growth. We’re thrilled to welcome them to V&E and are confident they will enjoy continued success with us.”

Click here to read the full Vinson & Elkins announcement

The Bowery Mission welcomed the JW Michals NYC team to lend a hand prepping and preparing food at their Tribeca campus. This amazing organization has served homeless and hungry New Yorkers since 1879.

Last year alone, The Bowery Mission provided more than 653,500 warm meals, 167,300 nights of shelter, distributed 46,380 articles of clothing and offered 1,300 onsite medical, dental and optometry exams. It was an honor to help. Can’t wait to do it again!

Celebrating their best year yet, 31 people earned a spot at the 8th annual JW Michaels & Co A.C. Incentive Trip, to enjoy a weekend full of sweet Atlantic City perks. Jason Wachtel, Managing Partner of JW Michaels & Co. kicked off the casino fun with a proud congratulations and a toast to their continued success in 2019.

IAPP New York KnowledgeNet
Date: September 12, 2018
Topic: DPOs Wanted: Making Your Next Move?
Time: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Speakers:
Lawrence Brown, VP, JW Michaels & Co.
H. Leigh Feldman, CIPP/US, CIPM, FIP, Managing Director, Head of U.S. Privacy, Promontory Financial Group, an IBM Company
Jo Ann Lengua Davaris, CIPP/US, CPO, Mercer
Michelle Perez, CIPP/US, CIPM, Head of Privacy, Samsung Electronics of America
Harry Valetk, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, Of Counsel, Baker McKenzie

Thank you to our meeting host, Baker & McKenzie, for providing refreshments.
Capacity for this meeting has been reached. If you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email knowledgenet@iapp.org.

About IAPP
The IAPP is the largest and most comprehensive global information privacy community and resource. Founded in 2000, the IAPP is a not-for-profit organization that helps define, support and improve the privacy profession globally. To learn more visit: https://iapp.org/