Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 196: Karly Wannos | Why Your Law Firm Needs an Employment Lawyer

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196: Karly Wannos | Why Your Law Firm Needs an Employment Lawyer · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:00
  Karly: Another one is the offer letter. If you are not offering a contract to your employee, make sure that that offer letter doesn't inadvertently create a contract. You know, you wanna put certain things in there, but you don't wanna go so far as to make contractual because of the at will nature if that's what you're proceeding under. Then a whole huge issue that comes up right after that is pay, how you're paying them. So you cannot just choose whether you're going to pay salary or hourly.
• 0:29
  There are certain requirements. The default is to pay everybody hourly. And then if you are not going to pay them hourly, they need to fall into one of the exemptions. And then, of course, there are certain things that must be met in order to pay someone a salary.
• 0:42
  Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers? Ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve, and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love.
• 1:13
  Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now here's Devina.
• 1:33
  Davina: Hi, this is Devina. And before we jump into today's show, I'd like first to introduce you to some of our sponsors. Over the last four years, Noble Marketing has tracked more than two fifty law firms and discovered 60 to 80% of new client calls were generated through Google my business and Google ads. Basically, you need to be on Google, noble marketing can help. I recommend them because they have an incredible guarantee.
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• 2:47
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• 3:19
  I'm your host, Davina Fredrick. And today, I'm here with Karly Wannos, a Florida employment lawyer and founder of the Wannos Law Firm in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, where she helps business and HR professionals engage in preventative steps to boost employment retention, navigate tricky issues under the FMLA, the ADA, and the FLSA, and other employment laws, as well as help avoid exposure to wrongful termination suits. Karly has practiced employment law for more than fifteen years, including her work in large litigation practice representing employers at the EEOC, state, federal court levels. Because of her litigation background, Karly provides many employment law trainings and on demand employment law courses to business and management teams and gives free legal webinars through her social media channels. Karly is also the host of the employment experience podcast, which is great, by the way.
• 4:12
  I've listened to it. It's wonderful stuff there, where she shares her insights and interviews guests on leadership, management, and all other things employment, law, and HR. Karly is also a Florida Supreme Court certified circuit mediator for employment law cases and conducts workplace investigations into claims of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation at the workplace. So welcome, Karly. I'm super excited to have you here today.
• 4:35
  Karly: Yes. Thank you so much for having me.
• 4:37
  Davina: Good. So I thought this would be great as you and I were talking for the show. I thought it'd be great to have you on. I saw you post something on social media. I was like, I've gotta get that woman on the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast because so many women law firm owners, if they don't specialize in the area of employment law, may make a lot of missteps and not not know what to do as they begin to scale and hire not only staff, but other attorneys.
• 5:02
  And it's very important as you're scaling and you're starting to add employees that you make friends with your employment law colleagues and hire them to help you figure these things out. So I thought we could have a lot of great discussions today about hiring and firing and everything in between. Did you know when you became an attorney that you wanted to go into employment law? Did you have a background in that, or was this something that your career evolved?
• 5:27
  Karly: So I did not necessarily have a substantial background in employment law. I think maybe I interned and I got a little taste of it through an internship, but this was really the first practice area that I got into. Right out of law school, I joined a very large litigation firm and this was the type of work that I was given and I really got lucky in that regard because I really enjoy this practice area. One of the reasons why I love this practice area so much is because a lot of the exposure to law firms and companies when hiring and having employees, it can be prevented. Right?
• 6:01
  As long as you have, like you were saying, the proper education in place, you can receive education on them and prevent them so that you can actually operate your practice and do what you're looking to do within your practice and not worry so much about, you know, the the employment law and legal aspect.
• 6:15
  Davina: What was interesting is you tell me before the show how many law firms that you've had as clients, that you've had quite a number. Why do you think that is? Because as lawyers, we should know better. But why do you think that is?
• 6:28
  Karly: We should know better. And I don't know exactly, but, you know, it's really across the board for all companies. You know, they just don't realize the large amount of law. You know, it's federal law, it's state law, it's local law that they now have to comply with when they hire somebody. And even before the hiring stage, right?
• 6:47
  So you have to comply with these employment laws even for people who you have not hired yet. Right? So as early as the time that you send out that job description, it needs to make sure that it complies with the law because those types of people reviewing those things and applying to work at your company, there could be risk there for a potential, let's say, wrongful termination or failure to hire type claim for individuals applying to work there. So I don't know necessarily why law firms get themselves into trouble. Again, it goes back to the education.
• 7:15
  They don't have an employment attorney on staff and they just don't realize it. A lot of these things are not intentional. Like I said, they just don't have the proper education in place. Right. And there's a lot of different areas.
• 7:28
  Right? I mean, it's all the way from interviewing to the way that you pay your employees to the way that you deal with medical issues, right, requests for medical leave and accommodations for those with disabilities and things like that all the way through termination. So there's a whole spectrum of different issues that can kinda get you into trouble that you need to make sure that you're complying with. So
• 7:51
  Davina: I know one of the challenges that's come up for a lot of women that have coached this last year is that the last few years is that they have hired people with the, you know, best of intentions that it's all gonna work out great and then wind up either the person leaves or they're terminating them in a very short time. So there's been a lot of turnover in the last few years. I think since the pandemic, there are lot of people who are, you know, questioning their purpose in life, don't wanna stay at a job for any length of time or whatever it is, or things that naturally occur like somebody spouse gets employed someplace and they have to move away. But it's kind of like when we get married, we don't wanna think about getting divorced when we get married. And yet, I think we have to really think about how this relationship is going to end before it begins or by the time it begins.
• 8:38
  We need to be thinking about that. Would you agree in terms of employment that we need to be thinking about termination right from the start?
• 8:46
  Karly: Not necessarily. So it really depends on what type of position you're hiring for. And so for certain positions, you're gonna wanna have employment contracts in place. That's going to be exactly what you mentioned. It's going to address the employment relationship and what happens if that goes south.
• 9:01
  What happens if you need to terminate this person? But Florida, as with many other states, are at will. So that means that you can hire and fire the person at any time. The person can leave at any time. They don't need to give notice.
• 9:13
  I think so for those people who don't necessarily need an employment contract in place, I think it's really important just to be aware when the time comes to terminate this person if that's the decision that you're making just to go through. There's a certain checklist that I go through with my clients. They call me and they say, look, this relationship isn't working out. I'm thinking about terminating this person. And we go through a checklist to make sure or to at least help make sure that their risk of terminating this person is lowered.
• 9:44
  So you're gonna wanna make sure there's no potential retaliation. And, again, I go through a list of questions. I actually have a guide on my website if we can list it in the show notes if you're interested, and your listeners can go and get that checklist because it's really helpful just to kinda go through and give you an idea of of different things that you should be looking for when terminating somebody. Of course, always consult your lawyer or your employment attorney before making any important decisions in that regard. But So most states are at will, and it really depends upon the relationship that you wanna have with that employee.
• 10:15
  Davina: What I was thinking of is in terms of sometimes if employers don't have certain policies in their policy manual and then it goes then time rolls around to terminate somebody, there may be some issue that arises as a result of not having something in their policy manual to begin with that
• 10:30
  Karly: Right.
• 10:31
  Davina: Would affect that experience. So for example, hiring somebody who's in the military and then having them get called to active duty and not having thought through what happened if that kind of thing occurred and not having a plan or a policy in place for such thing. Yeah.
• 10:48
  Karly: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's good to think about the entire relationship. Right? Because as you mentioned in in getting into a marriage with prenups, nobody really necessarily wants to think about that.
• 10:57
  But is the truth. I mean, there's always the chance that the relationship's not going to work out. So, yep, you definitely have to think about that ahead of time. And the employee handbook is excellent for that too for all your policies just to make sure you have the groundwork and the foundation and you're kind of treating everybody the same along the same guidelines and rules and practices.
• 11:16
  Davina: And just for all the Florida attorneys, Karly has an employee handbook that she sells on her website, so you guys might wanna check that out as well. Do you think that there's a difference between attorneys and staff with regard to should we have contracts? Because we often make written offers to attorneys that have a lot of information terms in them about their employment and the expectations. So we're really entering into contracts with attorneys. Right?
• 11:45
  How do you advise people to handle that in terms of having a contract with attorneys versus staff? Should they? Should they not? How do we approach that?
• 11:54
  Karly: Right. It's really up to the business and how attached to this person you want or need to be. So are you putting a lot of time and effort into training this person where it's important for you to have a long term relationship? A lot of employers don't want to necessarily get into an employment contract because of the at will status. Right?
• 12:17
  They want to be able to terminate at any time. Now, of course, in the contract, can write certain provisions for termination. I have found with attorneys, most attorneys don't have employment contracts unless there is some kind of issue with the payment, so if they're receiving commissions. So if you're a PI attorney, if you're a plaintiff's PI attorney and you are paying your attorney's commissions, that's something that's going to want to be set out in the agreement. But I find that most don't.
• 12:47
  It's really important to have contracts with your independent contractors. So if you have anybody that's working for you as a contractor, that's really important to have. And then as far as staff, most don't. Unless you have a substantial training that you're training them and you don't want them to turn around and leave after five months.
• 13:04
  Davina: Yeah. One of the things that I hear most often from my law firm owner clients, it's costing me so much. I'm training people and then they're leaving. And we've had discussions about getting reimbursed for training. So let's talk about, first of all, whether they could do that.
• 13:21
  And secondly, what are some of the things they need to think about in terms of making sure that they can, if they can get reimbursed for training?
• 13:29
  Karly: Right. So something like reimbursement for a training is absolutely going to need to be put into a contract. You wanna make sure that the person who you're hiring understands. The most important thing is that you're going to have the terms of their repayment listed in there very clearly. Right?
• 13:45
  When do they need to pay? Under what circumstances? What's the payment structure look like? And what happens if they cannot repay. Right?
• 13:52
  If it's a lump sum for $20,000, a lot of people that's not financially feasible for them. So some kind of payment structure built in there. And then, of course, just the regular terms of the contract that you would have in there. You'll also wanna make sure that the training that you're providing to them is specific to your company such that they could potentially take it elsewhere to one of your competitors or something like that. You're gonna wanna include specific provisions in there as well because that's essentially the basis for requiring the repayment.
• 14:21
  Davina: Right. Right. Right. As an employment lawyer, having worked with so many employers, what are some things you think that employers need to be doing or thinking about in terms of retention and keeping employees in this day and age because there is so much turnover from, you know, people getting poached, getting better offers or whatever. What kind of advice would you have around that?
• 14:41
  I know it's not strictly legal, but I'm just curious.
• 14:44
  Karly: Yeah. I actually through my podcast, I speak to a lot of experts in this field. I speak to a lot of leadership coaches and manager coaches. And so what they say is it really all comes down to having a balanced work experience and open lines of communication. And I know that that's pretty subjective and it's pretty vague, but just from my own experience, I mean, just being a good leader, being a good person, making sure that the expectations are set out.
• 15:17
  I know a lot of law firms might get themselves into trouble with regard to turnover because employees just don't know what their workload is going to be like or they don't have the appropriate supervision. And I think a lot of that comes down to training, number one, expectations and communication. I hope that answer helps. I mean, I'm not necessarily expert on that field. There are a lot of experts out there, but again, this is what I'm hearing from them.
• 15:42
  There's no magic thing that I think attorneys can do to retain their employees long term. I mean, they really need to figure out what the issue is too. I don't know. Some companies do exit interviews. I don't know if that's appropriate for every type of business or if employees are willing to do that, but exit interviews might also help to determine the reason if you have a lot of turnover why people are leaving.
• 16:04
  Davina: Right. Right. Let's talk about hiring and maybe some of the top mistakes that you see employers making when it comes to hiring that may get them into legal hot water.
• 16:16
  Karly: So as I mentioned earlier, the employment laws apply to the hiring phase too. And so this means discrimination, retaliation. So when employers are hiring, they need to be careful. My number one tip is your dos and don'ts of what you can and cannot say during the interview process. You cannot make references to certain protected classes.
• 16:41
  And I know that a lot of people will say, well, of course I don't do that, but it comes in the form of, you know, you are wanting to get to know the person, you are trying to develop rapport, so they might say some things that they might not think are potentially discriminatory. But the issue arises now when you don't hire that person, you could potentially have a failure to hire claim based upon what you said during the interview. So the protected classes are things like race, national origin, disability, gender. So you can't make reference to you obviously can't say, you know, we are only hiring females because that could be gender discrimination. I have had clients make reference to somebody's accent during an interview and then they did not hire the person.
• 17:25
  So they had a failure to hire based on national origin claim. And of course, a lot of these things are innocent. You are trying to get to know the person and, oh, I noticed your accent. Where are you from? Obviously, it's not a hard and fast rule on never to make those comments, but those are the kind of comments that could potentially expose employers to liability.
• 17:44
  Davina: The thing that comes to mind for me is finding ways to ask about children or family or that kind of thing. You may be wanting to know as an employer, do they have young children? Because in your mind, you're thinking they're probably gonna be out a lot with sick kids. And so I wanna know this. So how can I find this out without Exactly?
• 18:04
  Directly asking. But even indirectly, you know, finding ways to bring it up can get you into trouble. Right?
• 18:10
  Karly: Right. So I would just stay away from those types of questions. Obviously, you're, you know, friendly. You're wanting to get to know the person. You also wanna make sure that they're gonna be able to get to work on time or they're going to have childcare issues for their kids.
• 18:21
  But questions. You need to ask questions specific to the job. So I always recommend instead of asking, do you have childcare? You're just going to need to be direct and say, these are the hours of the job. Are you going to be able to be at work during that time without making reference to the familial status or the childcare issue?
• 18:41
  Davina: Yeah. Yeah. Once you've hired somebody, you made a decision, you hired somebody, and you're going through kind of the onboarding process, are there missteps that people make during that phase, or do you think that's in terms of maybe their first day, their benefits, their policy manuals, any of those kinds of things that you see anybody have issues with around that?
• 19:02
  Karly: You know, it really depends off the top of my head. If you're extending an offer letter, you wanna make sure that the offer letter is subject to a successful background check if you're conducting a background check. And then, of course, there are certain rules that you need to file follow with regard to what happens if the background check comes back negative. What can you do and what can't you do? Another one is the offer letter.
• 19:24
  If you are not offering a contract to your employee, make sure that that offer letter doesn't inadvertently create a contract. You know, you wanna put certain things in there, but you don't wanna go so far as to make it contractual because of the at will nature if that's what you're proceeding under. Then a whole huge issue that comes up right after that is pay, how you're paying them. So you cannot just choose whether you're going to pay salary or hourly. There are certain requirements.
• 19:52
  The default is to pay everybody hourly. And then if you are not going to pay them hourly, they need to fall into one of the exemptions. And then, of course, there are certain things that must be met in order to pay someone a salary. So a lot of times law firms are paying, let's say they're paralegal a salary and claiming that they're exempt from overtime, which they're really not. They're misclassified paralegals most of the time because they're not meeting those standards.
• 20:15
  So that's another one that comes up a lot. Pay classification and payment of overtime.
• 20:22
  Davina: Yeah. So why don't you explain exempt and nonexempt just so people because I know that's a term that a lot of people hear and they don't know what it means.
• 20:30
  Karly: Okay. So under the Fair Labor Standards Act, that's the federal law, and then there are also state counterparts to that law as well. All employees must be paid at least the minimum wage for all hours worked and then overtime, which is time and a half of their hourly rate for the hours that they work over forty hours, which most people understand. The issue really is if you are choosing not to pay somebody hourly and not to pay them overtime and you're gonna pay them a salary and they're going to be exempt from overtime, they need to fall within those categories. And so a lot of employers mess that up.
• 21:11
  They end up paying their employees if they put them on salary. A lot of employers pay a salary because they don't wanna pay overtime, but you definitely should not do that because you need to make sure that you're classified properly under the exempt category. When I say exempt, I mean exempt from overtime. Because if they're not and let's say you have your paralegal on a salary and she's working fifty hours a week. So fifty hours a week, she's working a salary.
• 21:39
  She really should be paid overtime for those ten hours a week and she's not. And so that's racking up. It's racking up over the years. And so what happens is when you go to terminate that paralegal, if she files a complaint with the Department of Labor, which a lot of times they do because now the relationship has gone south. Right?
• 21:56
  You have, for whatever reason, had to terminate this person. You now have a claim for essentially back wages for the last two to three years because she's claiming she was on salary and she should not have been, and you should have been paying her time and a half for all those years. Hope that
• 22:12
  Davina: makes sense. Yeah. No. That's what I wanted you to do is go into a little more detail on that because I think people get into trouble with that. You know, not really.
• 22:19
  They just think, well, I'm gonna pay them this way or that way, and they don't think I have to think about is this legal for me to do.
• 22:25
  Karly: Well, and another issue too is that if you have this paralegal that you're paying salary, is she clocking in and out every day? No. Probably not. So when she claims that she's been working sixty hours a week, the employer has no way to confirm that because there are no time cards because you've been paying her a salary and she hasn't been clocking in. So it ends up being a little bit more of a mess there in that sense as well.
• 22:51
  Davina: Right. Right. One common issue is this idea of is this person an independent contractor? Are they an employee? And now more than ever, what I see happening in other businesses as well as law firms is that they're not able to hire people because there just aren't enough applicants out there.
• 23:11
  It's like 1% unemployment in the legal industry or something. And so they're doing a lot more outsourcing, and they're also doing it to keep costs down and outsourcing globally as well as in The United States. So talk to us a little bit about independent contract. And I will say this. Recently, I was reading about in California where California, I think in their effort to protect misclassified employees being classified as independent contractor from, you know, big companies, particularly like the share rideshare companies.
• 23:43
  Yes. That they instituted a a law that basically kind of outlawed freelance work, you know? And so it really is affecting a lot of industry there. And I guess there's a lot of people, you know, working on trying to change that law now. But tell us what kinds of things you see happen with independent contractors and employees and people thinking, oh, I'm gonna start working with these people.
• 24:04
  They're independent contractors, so I don't need to worry about these employment laws. I hope you're enjoying the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. We'll get back to the show in just a moment. But first, I'd like to thank some of our sponsors. In the next ten years, 90% of legal services will be delivered online.
• 24:25
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• 26:05
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• 26:21
  Karly: Right. You are a 100 correct there. A lot of people wanna be paid as a contractor for purposes of taxes or they want a little bit more flexibility and so they wanna be a contractor. But from the employer's perspective, this person who is performing work for you falls either under one category or the other. So they are either an independent contractor or they're an employee.
• 26:46
  And again, there is a test. There are, you know, certain elements that you need to go through to determine which category this person fits in. You can't just call them an independent contractor. You can't even contract that away. If they're really employee, you can't, you know, sign a contract that says, no, we're agreeing you're an independent contractor.
• 27:05
  It doesn't work that way. California does have extremely strict rules. So there is federal law on this and then California has its own set of rules. So if you're in California, you're gonna need to consult with California law on this as as well as other states too. I think the federal rule might be in the process of being modified as well by the Department of Labor.
• 27:25
  It's a balancing test for the element of control that the company has over this person. So the more control the law firm or the employer has over the person performing the work, the more likely it's going to be an employee. So are you telling them what needs to get done? Are you telling them the hours? Are they using your equipment?
• 27:46
  Are they using your software? Are they using your email address? Right? That's a lot of control that you as the employer have over this person. And so this person's probably going to be an employee.
• 27:57
  And also if they're doing the work that you also perform for your business. Right? So if they're performing legal services for you and your law firm performs legal services, it's more likely going to be an employee. Now a true contractor, on the other hand, you're going to have less control over this person. This person's probably going to have their own company.
• 28:16
  They're gonna have their own insurance. They could potentially have their own employees that work for them. They are using their own equipment, whether it be software, computer, you know, whatever industry you're in, the trucking, you know, equipment and tools. You're not telling them how to do the job. You're hiring them to come and get a job done, but however they want to do it because they're the expert, right, they're going to get it done.
• 28:39
  And so that's the difference between the two. The reason why, and it's difficult because a lot of people, like I said, coming in these days, they want to be categorized as independent contractors. So it's really up to the law firm, the employer to make that decision. The decision can't be up to the person that you're hiring because what's going to happen is independent contractors don't fall under the employment laws. So you need to know which type of individual you have to know how to deal with them.
• 29:08
  So independent contractors aren't going to sign your employee handbook. They're not necessarily going to fall with under your workers' comp insurance. They're not necessarily going to be able to sue you for the discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination type claim. So, again, it's really important to have that kind of clear demarcation and also the overtime that we just discussed too. Independent contractors aren't getting paid overtime.
• 29:30
  So you can see the whole heap of issues that can come up from a misclassification.
• 29:35
  Davina: Where I see kind of a danger is I need you to be available for these hours. So you have somebody who's independent contractor and they have their own business entity, side hustle or whatever. They have an entity and they may have other clients, But then you start saying, you know, but I need you during this time to do these things. And as opposed to kind of project work where you get it done on your own time and there's a deadline and we get it back. So that's something I see is an often is a misstep.
• 30:06
  And I think the equipment issue is often a misstep that people make that they don't realize that they're making. And sometimes it's requiring employees to use their own equipment. A lot of work from home now and requiring employees to use their own. Well, they have their own phone and laptop, so they're just running on my software on their home laptop. I mean, all of those things get really muddy and really messy.
• 30:27
  Karly: And
• 30:27
  Davina: so because you have more and more people working from home now in addition to a lot of people using outsourcing to global VAs who work for themselves or whatever. And I wonder how complicated it can get when you're dealing with VAs in other countries.
• 30:44
  Karly: Yeah. I'm sure pretty complicated. One thing that you mentioned, you know, because a lot of the law firms might do work with these VAs or the contractors, this is a time where I definitely would recommend having a contract, an independent contractor agreement. And especially if you're on the fence as far as that balancing test that I mentioned, if you're not quite sure like, yes, they're falling under the contractor category except for this one thing that I'm not sure of. If you have an agreement that lays out very clearly lays out the relationship, I think that the company is probably in a better position to defend against that, should there be an issue down the road.
• 31:23
  Davina: Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about to the difference between, let's say, you're outsourcing to a company to provide reception services for you. And that's in a clearly established company providing those reception services, and that reception service needs to be available from these hours to these hours. That's a distinction between I've hired this individual to answer my phones, and they need to be available from this hour to this hour, but they're doing it remotely.
• 31:48
  And I'm calling them an independent contractor. That may be where you start getting into something that's a little stickier. Know? Consult with your attorney about that. Just to use some examples so that people can imagine where issues might arise.
• 32:00
  We talked a little bit about training and reimbursement for training. Is there anything else kind of in the training category that you ever see people have legal issues arise out of that circumstance?
• 32:12
  Karly: So I don't know if you're referring to, like, on the job training. I'll just answer for training purposes, and this is gonna be training on the employment laws. So you can tell me if that wasn't necessarily your question. When you have other employees, maybe other senior level associates who are making decisions for those subordinates, for those underneath them. If they are making decisions regarding employees and they're not trained on all these laws, that could get the law firm into trouble too.
• 32:47
  For instance, if they are looking to take time off for a medical issue or something of that nature, I mean, they need to know how to properly respond to these requests that gets law firms into trouble a lot when there could be a disability issue and they're not allowing additional time off off of work. So just train the people who are making those employment decisions. But I don't know. Were you asking more about on the job training?
• 33:12
  Davina: No. No. I think that's very interesting. Now I was just asking about legal issues that might arise out of training, and I think you've answered that with one example. And and I see that actually happen because oftentimes as law firm businesses are scaling, what happens is the lawyers will invite a spouse or a friend or a family member into work in their business and maybe put them in that kind of a management or HR sort of role that they're not really qualified to take on because they haven't had training around those issues.
• 33:43
  So if that is something that you're doing where you're bringing in somebody and you're saying, hey. Help me run my business, and I need you to handle HR issues, and they're not an HR professional with that background and experience, then you probably need to make sure you're providing training because they can get you in hot water and not know that they're getting you in hot water.
• 34:01
  Karly: Exactly. Just kind of an easy misstep. A lot of risk. There's a lot of litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that's the law that affords protection to those with disabilities in the workplace. And the term disability is so broad.
• 34:17
  It really covers really any medical issue, including mental health. So a lot of people have, you know, anxiety or depression. Those types of things, especially that people use loosely in the workplace, I have anxiety. Right? I mean, we've all heard that a million times.
• 34:32
  That could be deemed a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. So just training the individuals when they hear something like that, they then know, okay. Maybe I need to escalate this to somebody. Maybe I need to address it a little bit differently. Because normally when someone says in the workplace, you know, I have anxiety.
• 34:50
  I have a little depression. Like I said, sometimes it's used more loosely. Maybe they're making a formal request for an accommodation. There's a host of different things that employers need to do at that time. They need to engage in the interactive process.
• 35:03
  So, yes, I completely agree. And for to your point, when somebody brings someone in outside that doesn't have the training or doesn't know to look out for these things, that's absolutely a 100% where companies get themselves into legal trouble. And that's why I dedicate so much of my practice to educating my clients or, you know, establishing this relationship where they can pick up the phone and call and say, hey, have this issue that came up, what should I do? Because again, so much of this can be prevented in the first place.
• 35:29
  Davina: Right. Right. And you bring up this point about anxiety. I think that's a great example because since the pandemic, there have been a lot more open discussion about I have anxiety or I have depression or I have these, that can be a bigger problem than people realize because there are a lot of people out there who are saying, I have mental health issues, and you may just take it as you have anxiety. We all have anxiety, you know, and you're dealing with them, and that could come back to bite you later if you're not paying attention to that.
• 35:55
  Karly: Another one on that is the work from home. A lot of employers and law firms want their employees in the office, but working from home can be a reasonable accommodation for something like anxiety or depression or one of these, you know, disabilities that we were mentioning. So I know a lot of law firms have a strict no work from home, no work remotely, but you do have to make certain accommodations when you have employees who are falling under these categories. Another one that I wanted to mention really quickly before I forget is hiring remote employees in other states. So if you are a law firm and you have an employee who you're hiring, let's say they're licensed to work in Florida, your practice is in Florida, but they live in New York, you as the employer now have to comply with the employment laws of New York.
• 36:42
  Be aware because I think our world is, you know, very work remote friendly now, but it's the state that the person actually works in for purposes of employment laws.
• 36:51
  Davina: Yeah, that's great advice to look out for because I actually have a colleague who works for a Florida firm and she's in Wyoming and it's maybe very different there and needing to pay attention to that. We discussed termination earlier, and I know you have a checklist and everybody needs to get that. It's free. It's on our website. We'll have that link in the show notes.
• 37:10
  But if you could go through some of the missteps that you see people make during termination, even in an at real estate? Because I think employers think, well, at real estate means I can let you go anytime, any reason, but what are some of the mistakes that you see people make that get them into hot water?
• 37:25
  Karly: Right. And so terminating an employee is one of the things that produces the most risk for your company in terms of employment law. So when you're terminating companies in at will states, have the right to do so, especially if it's not working out. A lot of times, you have to terminate somebody because the relationship has just gone so bad. Of course, you can terminate at any reason.
• 37:48
  You don't have to give a reason. You can say, don't like the color of your T shirt. I don't recommend that, of course, but the termination cannot be for any legal reason. So what exactly does that mean? It can't be, discriminatory.
• 38:00
  It can't be retaliatory. So what I typically recommend and this is in my checklist is to go through and make sure that there are no potential retaliation claims. And at the time that you terminate somebody, there's more of an incentive for a lawsuit because they're without a job now. Right? They may not have found another job.
• 38:20
  They need, you know, financial assistance. So you really wanna be careful and make sure that you're taking the appropriate steps. You'll want to make sure that if it's a performance reason for termination, that it's well documented on your end either through performance reviews or, you know, communications that you've had with the employee. The termination meeting for performance should not be the first time that this employee is hearing that they've done something wrong or they've messed up. Best practices just give them an opportunity to correct whatever has been taking place and going wrong.
• 38:53
  Obviously, if that doesn't work out and you have your documentation in place, you're gonna wanna make sure that there's no potential retaliation claim. And so to do that, you'll just wanna make sure that they have not engaged in some sort of protected activity. And so that's going to be, you know, a whistleblower type complaint. Right. If they said that you're violating some ethical rule or some law or you're doing something inappropriate, that could be a whistleblower type retaliation claim.
• 39:21
  Have they requested an accommodation for a medical issue? You could have a retaliation claim for terminating somebody because of their disability. Have they made any complaints about any protected classes? So have they complained about harassment? That's a protected activity such that if someone complains, you can't just fire them.
• 39:42
  Have they made a workers' comp claim? You can't fire somebody for making a workers' comp claim. Has somebody complained about or questioned the way that you are paying them? So under the FLSA, the overtime, the pay issues that we went over, you obviously can't fire somebody for making those types of requests. A lot of times you're not terminating them because they complained about their hours, but if they did so within the past, especially the recent past, there's an exposure there.
• 40:09
  It puts the law firm at risk. So, again, you wanna just make sure that you have your documentation in place. You wanna make sure that there weren't any of these protected activities that they engaged in recently, and that's in general best practices. And then, of course, consider if you want to offer them a severance agreement because that's going to be the most protection for your company going forward if they sign it.
• 40:29
  Davina: Yeah. So offering a severance agreement is asking them to resign in sort of exchange for severance.
• 40:36
  Karly: You can ask them to resign. You can terminate them and say you're being terminated and we are going to offer you a severance package, which is an amount of money that you're going to pay them in exchange for them signing a release that they're not going to proceed with a lawsuit against your company. A lot of times that's really beneficial to both parties because someone who's been terminated needs financial assistance probably to bridge the gap from this job to the next job. A lot of times, it's very helpful to the employee as well and the employer because they get that release that they might need.
• 41:08
  Davina: Yeah. I think employers also think if they resign, then I don't have to worry about them going and applying for unemployment. Have you had situations around that particular issue?
• 41:20
  Karly: Yeah. And so that's if they will resign. So a resignation is going to be less risk to an employer. So from the employer standpoint, if the employee will resign, that would be better for the company. But a lot of employees either won't or they know better because when an employee resigns, they're waiving some of their rights, not waiving, but they're making it more difficult to assert their rights that they might have against the company.
• 41:47
  So a lot of employees just won't resign.
• 41:49
  Davina: Right. Right. And some could be persuaded to resign if you're offering severance. So it's maybe something for you to consider if that's something that you wanna make sure that you're protecting your company as much as possible. If you offer severance, that may be more likely to be able to have that situation.
• 42:07
  Karly: Right. A lot of employers, you know, it's very fact specific, obviously. If, you know, this person has been messing up and causing problems for your company, you might not want to pay them. But if it just makes sense for you to do so and your liability, it might be a good business decision in some situations to go ahead and offer that to them. Also, if there's been some, like, messy circumstances surrounding the employment, then you just want to have that peace of mind going forward that there's not going to be any issues in the future.
• 42:37
  Davina: Right. Right. Before we wrap up, is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you think is important for law firm owners to think about in terms of hiring and firing and all of those things in between?
• 42:50
  Karly: I think we pretty much covered everything. The only other thing that I would mention is there is some required documentation that employers absolutely must have. It's required by the Department of Labor and it's on the Department of Labor website and also posters. So you need to have certain posters and notice requirements if you have employees. The Department of Labor has on their website, I think it's called First Step Advisor, and you can go there and put in the information about your company.
• 43:20
  For instance, what state you're located in, your industry, it's very easy and fast, and the number of employees you have, and they will spit out a list of what required posters that you need to have. So you either need to hang those posters in your place of business or you need to circulate those amongst your employees as well.
• 43:37
  Davina: Most of the law firm owners who are the audience of this podcast are really small, well under 50. If they've got 10, that's a big firm to them or 20, you know, is big firm to them. And so some of the things apply, I think, you know, if with 50 or more employees or something like that. So some things may not apply for you, it's always a good idea to check.
• 43:58
  Karly: Right. So the federal laws, most of them apply at 15, but there are local laws that apply once you hit five employees. So I'm in Palm Beach County, and Palm Beach County has an ordinance that a lot of the laws that we've gone over apply to five employees. And then the FLSA, which was the wage and the overtime and the pay issues, those apply to one employee. So, yep, definitely the different laws apply to different size employers, so be sure to check that out as well in addition to the laws in your state.
• 44:30
  Davina: Yeah. Because I'm thinking that some people may be saying, well, you know, a lot of these things won't apply to me because I don't have 50 employees, but there are things that you need to be checking and making sure that they don't for sure apply to you.
• 44:41
  Karly: Right. A lot of them are five. The threshold is five, especially on the state level. So yep. Yeah.
• 44:47
  Definitely.
• 44:48
  Davina: I'm thinking about things like medical leave acts, the twelve
• 44:52
  Karly: weeks from LA.
• 44:54
  Davina: Yeah. FMLA. Things like that. So
• 44:57
  Karly: Yeah. You're exactly right. The FMLA is for medical leave for yourself or to care for somebody else. It's what most people refer to as the maternity leave. It's for twelve weeks and you do have to have 50 employees for the FMLA.
• 45:12
  So you're a 100% correct on
• 45:14
  Davina: that. You can do it, but you're not required to do it. Right. So that's one example. I was trying to think of some examples.
• 45:19
  Well, I thank you so much for being here, Karly. I would really encourage you to check out Karly's website. We're gonna include the link in the show notes because she has a lot of training materials, and that would be wonderful for you as a small business owner to listen to. And maybe if you have some key people in your company that are helping you as firm administrators or HR people, they might also go through some of these trainings. That it's a very reasonable resource that's available to you, particularly if you're here in Florida.
• 45:49
  I know there's some things that will be on the federal level and some things on the state level. And I always advise people to whatever state you're in, whatever jurisdiction you're in, find an employment law colleague and pay them a few dollars to spend some time with them or get them on retainer or whatever it is you need to do to help you out with these. Don't try to go alone if you're in a different practice area than employment law because I think it's one of those areas that it's really easy to make some missteps unintentionally because you think you're a good person, and I'm not trying to do anything to screw anybody over. The one area we didn't cover was sexual harassment. The majority of listeners are women law firm owners.
• 46:26
  They may think to themselves, well, it's not gonna happen here. It's not gonna be a part of what we ever have to deal with. But sexual harassment can happen in all kinds of workplaces, whether they're women bosses or not. Right? Have you seen very many issues around that with your law firm clients?
• 46:43
  Karly: Absolutely. My last law firm client most recently was sued for sexual harassment. And it's not necessarily just, you know, the physical touching. It's also words and comments that are made. So just really quickly, what happened was there was this I'm using air quotes, the funny person in the office, the jokester, would make comments and be very descriptive about certain relationships that she was having.
• 47:11
  And everybody knew it and she this was a female and she was doing this all the time. The relationship ended up going south. Somebody got terminated, right, which is always what happens. And then somebody claimed sexual harassment based upon the conversations that this female employee was having with them every single day, you know, these inappropriate comments about her relationship. So, again, not just the physical aspect, but the conversation.
• 47:36
  It needs to be really professional at all times. No interoffice dating. You really have to be strict about the interoffice relationships, especially at a law firm. In the conversation, you know, everybody might have that quote unquote funny or inappropriate person that everybody thinks is funny. But, again, you have to think about what happens when the relationship goes south.
• 47:55
  Someone gets terminated and all of a sudden this funny conversation is no longer funny anymore. So yep.
• 48:01
  Davina: Right. Right. Right. Or just a means to, you know, if they're unhappy about being terminated, then that's something they can hang their hat on and bring a claim about even if at the time they weren't offended by it.
• 48:11
  Karly: Exactly. Another one that's big for law firms is the happy hours. You know, everybody's going out after work for happy hour or we're getting together for a firm function. And then once the drinking starts taking place, you know, that leads to potentially to other inappropriate behavior. So just to be aware and have a handle on that.
• 48:30
  I'm not trying to shut down everybody's fun, but there are definitely certain things to be aware of and take into account.
• 48:35
  Davina: You may think to yourself, well, that's not gonna come back on me because that didn't happen during work hours. It didn't happen at my workplace, but there could be ramifications for that if it's a company sponsored event or something like that. So great information and tips. I know there's a lot more that you could talk to us about, but I think there's a lot here for people to absorb and think about, and they definitely should visit your website. Tell us how we can reach out to you if we want to reach out to you.
• 49:01
  Karly: Absolutely. Thank you so much. So you can reach me at Karly@wannoslaw.com is my law firm. And then you mentioned the trainings. I also have a consulting website where I offer the on demand trainings and courses.
• 49:14
  So if you are interested in learning more about the employment laws and you wanna make sure that you are complying, the courses are on the federal level. And I do indicate, you know, where it stays specific and not. Or if you have an office manager or HR professional or other, you know, senior level associate who's making these types of decisions, there are different types of courses that they can take to make sure that they comply with the employment laws. And so that's at www.carlywannos.com. That's the name of that website.
• 49:44
  All the information is there.
• 49:46
  Davina: Good. And we'll have those links down below for people so they can just click on it and go right there. Karly, for being here. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed the conversation.
• 49:54
  Karly: Yes. Same here. Thanks so much for having me.
• 49:57
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.