Workplace MVP LIVE from SHRM 2022: Louis Lessig, Brown & Connery, LLP

Louis Lessig, a partner with Brown & Connery, LLP, joined Jamie Gassmann on Workplace MVP LIVE from SHRM 2022. Louis is an employment attorney who got his start in HR. He and Jamie talked about his journey, his work, and hot topics in the HR space these days, including marijuana & ADA. He also shared highlights from his presentations on ADA and retention at SHRM and much more.

Workplace MVP is underwritten and presented by R3 Continuum and produced by the Minneapolis-St.Paul Studio of Business RadioX®.

This show was originally broadcast live from the 2022 SHRM Annual Conference held at the New Orleans Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Louis Lessig, Partner, Brown & Connery, LLP

Louis Lessig is a partner with the firm of Brown & Connery, LLP. His practice concentrates in labor and employment counseling, litigation, negotiations, and training.

Mr. Lessig represents clients in all types of employment matters, including but not limited to claims of discrimination, harassment, hostile work environment, wage and hour irregularities, and retaliation in state and federal courts as well as before administrative agencies including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, National Labor Relations Board, U.S. Department of Labor, American Arbitration Association, New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, New Jersey Office of Administrative Law, Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, and Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations.

In 2018, he received the Delaware Valley HR Consultant of the Year Award. In 2016 he was an Honoree for the SmartCEO Centers of Influence Awards. In 2015, he received the SmartCEO ESQ Industry Practice Award – recognizing the region’s most trusted advisors. Since 2012, Mr. Lessig has been selected each year as a “Super Lawyer” in Labor and Employment law. In 2010, Mr. Lessig was selected by the New Jersey Law Journal as one of the “Top 40 Attorneys Under 40” in New Jersey. Mr. Lessig was also selected in 2010 as a Delaware Valley Human Resources Consultant of the Year Nominee. Mr. Lessig is a nationally recognized speaker and publishes articles that have appeared in periodicals including Westlaw Journal Employment, Westlaw Journal Computer and Internet, the Family and Medical Leave Handbook, Employment Litigation Reporter, Corporate Risk Spectrum, HR Professional, The Tri-State and Labor and Employment Law Quarterly. He was an adjunct professor at the Comey Institute for Industrial Relations at St. Joseph’s University. Mr. Lessig was also a principal in the Pinnacle Employment Law Institute (PELI), which conducted training sessions and provided developmental assistance in employment relations.

After graduating from law school, he served as judicial law clerk to the Honorable M. Allan Vogelson, Presiding Civil Judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey in Camden County.

In addition to his professional activities, Mr. Lessig currently serves on the Garden State Council – SHRM as the New Jersey State Director. He is also immediate Past President of the Board for the National Speakers Association (NSA), Philadelphia chapter. He is also a member of Tri-State HRMA where he is a Past President of the chapter and serves as Chair of the Legislative Committee. Mr. Lessig is past President of the Muhlenberg College Alumni Board.

Martindale-Hubbell “AV” Preeminent® Rating

Brown & Connery, LLP

Brown and Connery is one of South Jersey’s oldest and most well-regarded law firms. In 1928, Horace G. Brown, a preeminent trial lawyer, and Thomas F. Connery, a distinguished litigator, founded the practice in Camden, New Jersey. The firm has continued to evolve to meet changing times, changing culture and changing client needs. Driven by the ideal of excellence, Brown and Connery is proud to have earned an “AV” rating by Martindale-Hubbell*, its highest rating.

We take our work and our client’s needs seriously, and have built a reputation for quality legal services grounded in our founder’s tradition of thoroughness, hard work and integrity. Our talented attorneys and support staff are committed to our high standards, which means those who turn to our firm can count on us to maintain the highest ethical and intellectual standards when representing their needs.

The firm practices all across New Jersey with offices conveniently located in Westmont, Woodbury and Camden. Our Philadelphia office supports our practice in Pennsylvania.

Brown and Connery provides a wide range of legal services to its clients. These services can be seen listed and more fully described on this website among our Key Practices.

Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook

About Workplace MVP

Every day, around the world, organizations of all sizes face disruptive events and situations. Within those workplaces are everyday heroes in human resources, risk management, security, business continuity, and the C-suite. They don’t call themselves heroes though. On the contrary, they simply show up every day, laboring for the well-being of employees in their care, readying the workplace for and planning responses to disruption. This show, Workplace MVP, confers on these heroes the designation they deserve, Workplace MVP (Most Valuable Professionals), and gives them the forum to tell their story. As you hear their experiences, you will learn first-hand, real-life approaches to readying the workplace, responses to crisis situations, and overcoming challenges of disruption. Visit our show archive here.

Workplace MVP Host Jamie Gassmann

**Jamie Gassmann, Host, “Workplace MVP”**

In addition to serving as the host to the Workplace MVP podcast, Jamie Gassmann is the Director of Marketing at R3 Continuum (R3c). Collectively, she has more than fourteen years of marketing experience. Across her tenure, she has experience working in and with various industries including banking, real estate, retail, crisis management, insurance, business continuity, and more. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass Communications with special interest in Advertising and Public Relations and a Master of Business Administration from Paseka School of Business, Minnesota State University.

R3 Continuum

R3 Continuum is a global leader in workplace behavioral health and security solutions. R3c helps ensure the psychological and physical safety of organizations and their people in today’s ever-changing and often unpredictable world. Through their continuum of tailored solutions, including evaluations, crisis response, executive optimization, protective services, and more, they help organizations maintain and cultivate a workplace of wellbeing so that their people can thrive. Learn more about R3c at www.r3c.com.

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from SHRM 2022 at the New Orleans Convention Center, it’s time for Workplace MVP. Brought to you by R3 Continuum, a global leader in helping workplaces thrive during disruptive times. Now, here’s your host.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:19] Hey, everyone. You’re host, Jamie Gassmann here, and I’m coming to you from SHRM 2022 Exhibit Hall. And I’m in R3 Continuum, our sponsor’s booth. And joining me is Louis Lessig from Brown and Connery. Did I pronounce that all correctly?

Louis Lessig: [00:00:36] You absolutely did. Thank you.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:38] Awesome. Well, welcome to the show, Louis.

Louis Lessig: [00:00:40] I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:41] Oh, we’re excited to have you on. I know we’ve been doing a lot of talking before getting on the actual microphone. So, give us a little background about your career journey into this space and coming into the kind of H.R. perspective. I know you’re not an H.R. person, but talk to me a little bit about how you got here.

Louis Lessig: [00:00:57] So, actually my undergrad is in H.R., and I was a student member of SHRM. We won’t say when, but when I got out –

Jamie Gassmann: [00:01:05] Ten years ago?

Louis Lessig: [00:01:05] Sure. Absolutely. But when I was in my major, I was doing an internship at a hospital and the generalist turned to me and said, “Do you want to do benefits your whole life?” I’m sure no one listening to this does benefits. I said, “Actually, I absolutely do not.” And he said, “Well, then you know what you should do? You should go to law school.” So that’s what I did.

Louis Lessig: [00:01:29] And then, while I was in law school, I gravitated towards the labor and employment kind of work, got out and started – I clerked for a judge and then went to one firm, spent 11 months there, and then went to the firm I’m with now, doing employment labor. Simultaneously, I was also doing a – I had a training company where we were doing harassment sort of stuff, all on the side. So, I was doing both till 9/11 and the training stuff went south and I’ve been doing the whole employment labor stuff since.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:01] Wow! And you’re in a great spot here, lots of H.R. leaders. So, what are some of the hot topics you’re seeing with your clients right now in the labor and employment law arena?

Louis Lessig: [00:02:12] Well, it depends on what state you’re in.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:14] Oh, okay.

Louis Lessig: [00:02:15] Because the whole medical versus recreational marijuana component is fascinating. The truth is, because of everything around COVID, there’s been a lot of the reasonable accommodation components around the ADA and, of course, how we deal with leave and the desire or shifting desires, if you will, in terms of the workforce and how much do they want to come back to the workplace, do they not want to come back to the workplace? How do we make that happen? Because the law is always trying to catch up. And so, it’s been a bit more of a challenge than one might think. And, of course, everybody dumps all the stuff at H.R.’s feet, which makes sure that the billable hours just keep on rolling.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:57] I bet. Yeah. And I got to imagine with a lot of this remote work, people working from home, that’s got to be a whole new kind of caveat with some of the different like Work Comp rules. Like, if I slip in my own kitchen, is that Work Comp because I was on the clock? I mean, like, I’m just so curious and fascinated about that. Like, what are you seeing from that perspective with some of the changes in the work environment that employers are facing?

Louis Lessig: [00:03:22] Well, you can start as early as taking a look at things like how much real estate do they really need anymore? And then, from there, you move into like to your question. You probably don’t know this, but if you own your own home, the comprehensive insurance you currently have in your home already includes part-time Workers’ Comp generally speaking. You can get a rider if you want full comp coverage on top of your homeowners. Most people don’t know this. But when my kids were really young, had like the nanny working full time and I inquired about this, it was a $60 rider a year for full Worker’s Comp coverage.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:03] Wow!

Louis Lessig: [00:04:04] That’s 60 bucks I cut every year.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:06] Yeah. And that covers you as the worker because you’re inside the home.

Louis Lessig: [00:04:11] Correct.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:11] Interesting. Okay. Well, that’s a great lesson for our listeners to be hearing about it. I might have to call my insurance company. So, now I know you’re speaking at this year’s conference and it sounds like you’ve got a couple of different presentations. So, let’s start with you giving kind of the titles of the two, and then let’s dive into each of them and talk a little bit about each one of them.

Louis Lessig: [00:04:30] Sure. So, tomorrow I’ll be talking on “ Adventures in ADA, the Good, the Bad, and the Oh My’.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:38] I love that, oh my.

Louis Lessig: [00:04:40] Any time I’m dealing with the ADA, it’s always a function of you cannot make this up.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:47] Yeah.

Louis Lessig: [00:04:47] And your jaw would either hit the floor or you’re just going to start dying laughing. The other, on Wednesday morning, the intro to the president speaking actually. I will be talking on “Positive Conversations Using Employment Laws as a Retention Tactic”.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:05:05] Interesting. And I suppose that’s going to be a hot topic with all the labor and the great resignation or the great reshuffle, depending on who you ask. So, let’s dive into your ADA and the oh my. So, looking at that presentation, what are you hoping your attendees come out of that with like a top three takeaways that you want them to get from your presentation?

Louis Lessig: [00:05:27] So both presentations are hybrid. So, the cool part is I’ve designed them to engage both the virtual audience as well as the live audience. When we talk about the ADA, it’s really about having folks understand two things, the lay of the land in terms of some of the court decisions that have come out over the last year but then it’s also what’s in those decisions that are the true takeaways. Because I can tell stories till the cows come home, but it’s really what’s in it for me, right? That’s why everybody’s coming to a session.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:05:58] Yeah.

Louis Lessig: [00:05:59] And a lot of what you see in the ADA is employers end up tripping up because they don’t legitimately go through the interactive process, or they have a manager that says, “Oh, I’m sort of fed up with this person. They’ve got too many issues. I don’t want to play ball”. And it’s as if they want to buy litigation. So, the hope is that you understand the good in terms of good for employers, the bad in terms of did you really want to do that? And the oh my in terms of, seriously, this fact pattern just makes my skin crawl.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:32] Yeah.

Louis Lessig: [00:06:33] And, hopefully, what they take away from that is a level of empathy for the people that they work with.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:42] Yeah. I love that. And now, let’s look at your Wednesday presentation because I think that that, you know, anything you can do to try to increase retention for some of these organizations, it’s got to be huge, so talk to me a little bit about that one. What are the takeaways of that presentation?

Louis Lessig: [00:06:56] So, that presentation I’m very passionate about. I sort of view the ADA, it’s very nuts and bolts. This other one that’s on Wednesday is really taking the way in which everyone presumes as an employment lawyer I would approach things and flip it on it’s head.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:14] Interesting.

Louis Lessig: [00:07:15] And what I mean by that is this, most folks look at employment laws, ADA, FMLA, FLSA, it’s a bunch of acronyms and it’s all about this crazy thought process of compliance, like the most overused word in the H.R. space. That’s not what it’s about. It is a road map to help us, help our employees get what they need, have them understand, look, we’re here for one another. The better we do, the better we do. And really taking a look at those employment laws, appreciating what the parameters are and how you can better your business by sort of following the proverbial path rather than, “Oh, my God. What did we do wrong? I think we got to go run or cut a check.”

Jamie Gassmann: [00:08:00] Oh, yeah. I love that. They’re going to be taking definitely some interesting points from that, something different hopefully than what they’ve probably thought of it before.

Louis Lessig: [00:08:09] Exactly.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:08:11] Amazing. So any other things you want to leave our audience with? You know, you got the microphone here, you know, your expertise in the employment law. What are your thoughts? What do you think that H.R. leaders need to be watching out for?

Louis Lessig: [00:08:25] I think they need to be very unique in their view of the world. We can’t look at -whether you have ten employees or 10,000 employees, we are truly at a point where the level of customization that we need to do in this space is in a way that no one has ever anticipated before. I’m not sure everybody’s really ready for. But that’s why the talk on the ADA makes so much sense right now because it is individualized and most organizations want to be able to say, “Here’s the cookie-cutter approach.” You know, you guys do some behavioral health stuff. And when you think about it, the challenge there is what each person needs is something different. And that’s where life gets hard. Because when you have issues, you try to figure out, well, how do I avoid it or how do I get past it? And if it’s individualized in nature, it can be more challenging. And I’m really here to tell everybody, take the time to figure it out. It’s better to spend a little bit up front to try and come up with those policies and the procedures that are going to allow you to engage with your employees rather than deal with them when they’re complaining and filing litigation.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:09:33] Yeah. It’s kind of like don’t take the one-size-fits-all approach.

Louis Lessig: [00:09:37] Exactly.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:09:38] Look for how you can tailor it. Great advice. Love that. Well, Louis, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on our show. Thank you so much for stopping by.

Louis Lessig: [00:09:46] It has been my honor. Thank you so much.

Outro: [00:09:53] Thank you for joining us on Workplace MVP. R3 Continuum is a proud sponsor of this show and is delighted to celebrate most valuable professionals who work diligently to secure safe workplaces where employees can thrive.