This post was originally published on this site.
Paul Hastings has hired a group of four employment law partners from Baker McKenzie, the firm said Monday. Partners Paul Evans, Krissy Katzenstein, Blair Robinson and Jeffrey Sturgeon will be based in the firm’s New York office.
The group focuses on complex workplace litigation, including equal pay issues, discrimination, employee benefits and wage-and-hour issues, the firm said in a release.
The four “further enhance our ability to represent clients at the C-suite and board levels on their most sophisticated and complex matters, including high-profile matters across the employment spectrum,” said firm chair Frank Lopez in a statement.
In an interview, Evans and Katzenstein said they had worked across from, and sometimes in conjunction with, Paul Hastings for years and on employment matters and the union of their two practices had an “organic” genesis.
<!–>
“We have worked in collaboration with the Paul Hastings team and we have done joint representations with them,” Evans said. “Through the course of time, we developed a relationship with one another.”
–> <!–>
Katzenstein said the Paul Hastings employment litigators have worked on some of the “most complex cases in the space,” and that the firm’s employment practice paired “nicely with the work we do.”
–> <!–>
Evans said that, while he didn’t see any of their former colleagues moving over with them in the immediate future, continued bench depth and expansion are things the Paul Hastings practice will continue to focus on.
–>
“We view the market as having an appetite for what exists at Paul Hastings, and we see opportunities for growth and building bench strength in the future,” Evans said.
Katzenstein said the group has recently been advising clients on pay equity and transparency and how the upcoming U.S. presidential election will affect employment law.
“We are all keeping an eye on the election,” she said. “There can be a change in what federal agencies are looking at, and those shifts could be drastic for some of our clients.”
Increasingly, Evans said, the group has also been advising companies and individuals on the use of generative artificial intelligence in hiring. “There is currently a patchwork of state and local laws for AI usage in employment, and we are helping clients navigate that space,” he said.
A Baker McKenzie spokesperson said the firm thanked them for their contributions. “Our employment team provides best-in-class representation for domestic and international employment litigation, counseling and transactional matters. We are committed to serving our clients and growing our capabilities in New York,” the spokesperson added.