Compensation & Benefits Boot Camp 2011

Increase your compensation & benefits knowledge to become a better labor and employment attorney or HR professional

Do you know what is defined as deferred compensation under 409A? Can you identify when you are dealing with an ERISA plan? Or name the strategic advantages of having such a plan if litigation arises? Would you be able to spot compliance failures in a target company s benefits plan? Do you know what to look for in plan documents before you draft an offer letter, severance plan or settlement agreement?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you could be missing critical issues for your clients and setting them up for large amounts of liability, tax penalties or litigation. Recent regulation, including the Dodd-Frank Act and the PPACA, have made it clear that it is essential for those who do not have compensation and benefits practices but who deal with these highly legislated and litigated fields to understand the rules and regulations that impact the compensation and benefits arena.

Because employee-related litigation often hinges on what happened in the drafting or negotiation stages of designing an employee handbook, initiating an offer or reviewing transactional documents in an acquisition, it is imperative that labor and employment practitioners become well-versed in the essentials of ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and other common issues that pop up in the comp & benefits arena.

ACI s Compensation & Benefits Boot Camp 2011 has been designed to give labor and employment attorneys
and HR professionals, along with any other attorneys dealing in these arenas, a strong, working knowledge of core issues needed to be competent in the comp & benefits arena. A distinguished faculty of top compensation and benefits attorneys from across the country will share their knowledge and give you critical insights on:

• The new standards for defining deferred compensation and why the old drafting standards for offer letters, severance packages and settlement agreements no longer work
• The basics of ERISA, including:
• Spotting an ERISA plan
• The strategic advantages of litigating with an ERISA qualified plan
• Knowing how to keep your plan ERISA-compliant
• Best practices in drafting employment contracts, offer letters, settlement agreements, severance packages, and employee handbooks
• Understanding the exceptions and special compensation and benefits problems when dealing with a bargained for workforce
• The interaction between comp & benefits law and the Bermuda Triangle: the ADA, FMLA and Workers Comp
• The special issues to look for when advising multi-national corporations