With regard to representing employers, what we find is that it’s more of a day-to-day partnership, in terms of our relationship with our employer clients. The companies that we represent, of all walks in terms of what they do by industry, manufacturing, sales, medical practices, law firms; We represent the whole host of different kinds of employers. A lot of it deals with day-to-day counseling and advice as things come up in their workplace.

To give you an example of what I’m talking about, it would be an employer calls us and says, “Carlos, I just had an employee come into my office and complain that they were being discriminated on the base of their race. What do I do?” We assist and we counsel the client on how to go through that process of investigating a claim of discrimination, taking what’s called prompt and appropriate remedial action. Of course, then we also represent employer clients when something happens, like a lawsuit. They call us, engage us and tell us they’re being sued, can we help them in defending the case? Of course, we are happy to assist if there’s no conflict of interest.

With regard to operational assistance, we do and have, as part of our practice, what we call a proactive practice. Usually, when I spoke earlier about the lawsuit, that’s what happens after the fact. We do a lot of things to help on the proactive side of the operations. That would be the assistance with the formulation of handbooks and policies and training management. The latest and greatest on employment law developments and the latest and greatest with regard to anti-discrimination law. We treat and train employees on how to treat employees in the workplace and how to engage in proactive management of employees.

Every case is different and the cost associated with a case is different as well. In terms of the way the arrangement works is that we have retainer arrangements where we are paid a monthly fee to provide day-to-day counseling, in terms of our advice. Or we can be hired by the hour on an as-needed basis for whatever might come up in the workplace by way of a lawsuit, for example. They need representation for that one particular matter.

The biggest value that we can provide employers is really a proactive process and partnering with the employer as things come up. It’s oftentimes cheaper to invest on the front end to deal with an issue as it’s developing and to deal with it in a proactive way than it is to deal with it on the back end, when the crisis happens. An employer looking for representation should be willing to engage in preventive medicine, if you will, to assist in preventing problems. You have to have the ability to assess your practice and your business, make the changes that need to be made, deal with issues as they come up, fix them, as opposed to wait until it’s broken, where the repair is going to be a lot more expensive.