Practice Strengths

We advise employers of all types and sizes on all aspects of qualified plans, retirement plans for tax exempt employers, health and welfare plans, and equity and deferred compensation planning for executives, including the federal and state tax, securities and employee benefits law aspects of supplemental executive retirement plans (SERPs), contributory nonqualified deferred compensation plans and programs, stock purchase and stock option plans and agreements, and bonus and incentive plans and programs. Our lawyers understand the tax, accounting, disclosure and securities law considerations such plans require, and demonstrate the issues to consider before adopting complex compensation arrangements and contracts.

If litigation arises over the dismissal of senior executives, our practical knowledge of compensation and employment policies at the highest corporate levels enables us to put on an effective defense.

BakerHostetler is a leader in designing QSLOB compliant tax qualified benefit plans.

Benefits Experience

Distinctive clients, discreet needs
BakerHostetler designs customized benefits and compensation programs for hundreds different types of clients with thousands of unique situations. We develop plan documents for businesses with bargaining employees—from large multinational corporations or privately held businesses to smaller entrepreneurial ventures.

How we work together
We work together with clients to develop and maintain creative programs that meet the business objectives of management—including the key strategic objective of attracting and maintaining a productive workforce.

Our employee benefits and executive compensation team includes benefits, litigation, business, employment, bankruptcy, securities, and tax attorneys who provide comprehensive counsel to meet distinct client needs. We work successfully with all levels of management, from the boardroom to the production floor, and with our clients' human resources, legal departments, corporate offices and bargaining unit representatives.

Recently, the world's largest producer and distributor of laboratory equipment and furniture, engaged BakerHostetler to review its employee benefits functions and operations worldwide. Our employee benefits attorneys worked with labor and employment attorneys in all of our offices to help the client reduce benefits costs and improve procedures.

Comprehensive services
Our employee benefits and executive compensation team has extensive knowledge of the complex web of intertwining federal and state laws, as well as courtroom litigation experience and administrative experience dealing with governmental agencies. We have represented client interests before the U.S. Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and others. Our team works effectively with attorneys in our national Litigation Group, with clients' legal departments or other counsel.

Defense of benefit plan fiduciaries
We have significant experience in defending fiduciaries concerning challenges of their stewardship and management of plan assets. We provide counsel and representation to pension plan investment managers, financial institutions, those with accounting responsibilities and others who come under scrutiny as a result of plan asset losses.

Complex class action litigation
We represent businesses in complex class action litigation involving such matters as retiree health care, or complicated, systematic pension benefit calculation cases with thousands of affected participants.

Confidential workforce adjustment counsel
During challenging economic times, when workforce reorganization, reassignment or reduction is required, many clients take advantage of our client-attorney protected counsel—an aspect of our counseling service that cannot, by law, be provided by consulting or accounting firms.

We help mitigate the risk of employee law suits under the ADA, the ADEA, or the Older Workers Benefits Protection Act. Our depth of experience also extends to benefits and pension issues related to both voluntary and involuntary separation programs.

Qualified plan compliance
We routinely assist clients in establishing the following—designing, amending, qualifying and terminating: 

• tax-qualified or tax-favored pension profit-sharing, 401(k) wage deferral and 403(b) annuity plans
• stock bonus and purchase plans
• ESOP and similar plans (including single and multiemployer collectively bargained plans), and ERISA documentation
• We also prepare and review these documents for clients prior to submission to the government.

Special pension plans
We represent management, labor and governmental interests in the negotiation, establishment and administration of public pension plans, church plans, multiemployer (Taft-Hartley), and exempt organization plans.

Private equity
We counsel numerous private equity issuers, from venture capital funds to REITs and real estate operating companies where ERISA plans or other benefit plan investors are involved.  

About Our Benefits Team
BakerHostetler lawyers develop integrated benefits solutions for employers of all sizes and complexity. In addition to our own in-depth experience with benefit and compensation plans and related litigation—which, for many team members includes in-house service with accounting and benefits consulting firms, as well as with corporate employers—we work closely with colleagues in the firm's nationally respected employment law and tax law practices. The result is strategic, comprehensive advice that goes far beyond the scope of boutique practices or benefits consultants.