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Are there any in-house or firm employment lawyers here who have experience dealing with EEOC on the defense side? Can you shed some light on what the work involves? Do you respond to EEOC complaints that employees have filed against the company, on the company's behalf? What does that entail?

I am looking into some in-house positions that involve heavy EEOC defense work and I want to get an idea of what that consists of

I’m a federal employment attorney now but worked at a National L&E firm doing lots of employment discrimination defense.

Essentially, in the private sector, an employee can file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC and as the employer you’ll get notice of the charge. You’ll write a response to the charge (these are usually in a letter/brief format) and submit it to the EEOC. Before drafting the response, you’ll generally conduct an investigation on your own so you can supplement your response with evidence as to why there was no discrimination. 9/10 times the EEOC will accept your response at face value and issue the plaintiff a notice of right to sue and that the EEOC couldn’t determine if there was discrimination. Then the plaintiff can decide if they want to sue.

I found the work interesting because I like employment law. I liked face time with real people and a different set of facts/story in every different case. I left private practice to go to the feds because I hate the firm life, but I would have totally done an in-house position doing this type of work.

Anonymous User wrote:I’m a federal employment attorney now but worked at a National L&E firm doing lots of employment discrimination defense.

Essentially, in the private sector, an employee can file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC and as the employer you’ll get notice of the charge. You’ll write a response to the charge (these are usually in a letter/brief format) and submit it to the EEOC. Before drafting the response, you’ll generally conduct an investigation on your own so you can supplement your response with evidence as to why there was no discrimination. 9/10 times the EEOC will accept your response at face value and issue the plaintiff a notice of right to sue and that the EEOC couldn’t determine if there was discrimination. Then the plaintiff can decide if they want to sue.

I found the work interesting because I like employment law. I liked face time with real people and a different set of facts/story in every different case. I left private practice to go to the feds because I hate the firm life, but I would have totally done an in-house position doing this type of work.

Thanks! What does the investigation involve? Do you speak to the employee who filed the charge, or HR, or just go through documents yourself? Is the response mostly statements of facts or do you write legal arguments?

If the plaintiff gets the right to sue, do you ever re-engage with them in court? Is it usually state or federal court?

This sounds like a fun area of law; I'm surprised no one talks about it much.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I’m a federal employment attorney now but worked at a National L&E firm doing lots of employment discrimination defense.

Essentially, in the private sector, an employee can file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC and as the employer you’ll get notice of the charge. You’ll write a response to the charge (these are usually in a letter/brief format) and submit it to the EEOC. Before drafting the response, you’ll generally conduct an investigation on your own so you can supplement your response with evidence as to why there was no discrimination. 9/10 times the EEOC will accept your response at face value and issue the plaintiff a notice of right to sue and that the EEOC couldn’t determine if there was discrimination. Then the plaintiff can decide if they want to sue.

I found the work interesting because I like employment law. I liked face time with real people and a different set of facts/story in every different case. I left private practice to go to the feds because I hate the firm life, but I would have totally done an in-house position doing this type of work.

Thanks! What does the investigation involve? Do you speak to the employee who filed the charge, or HR, or just go through documents yourself? Is the response mostly statements of facts or do you write legal arguments?

If the plaintiff gets the right to sue, do you ever re-engage with them in court? Is it usually state or federal court?

This sounds like a fun area of law; I'm surprised no one talks about it much.

Usually it’s a mix of speaking to your employees and reviewing documents/evidence. You’ll never talk to the charging party once they’ve filed a charge unless they are pro se.. at that’s point it’s too late and they’re already adverse.

Most people on these boards don’t talk about EEOC work because most biglaw firms don’t have a lot of EEOC work. These types of suits carry a maximum of $300k in compensatory damages making them low dollar cases for most big firms. Unfortunately, insurance companies have stepped into the realm of insuring businesses from these types of suits, too. Lots of the L&E boutiques like Littler and Jackson Lewis have to deal with EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) carriers that pay ridiculously low rates. No true biglaw firm is going to bill it’s associates out at $150/hr. Basically, it’s kind of crappy work on the defense side at firms because of the bad rates. Conversely, it’s really fun and useful work in-house.

As far as once a plaintiff decides to sue, it depends on what state you’re in. States with civil rights statues provide for an indepent state cause of action which means an employee can sue in state or federal court. In these states, charges are “dual filed” at the state and federal level. In states without these types of statues, it’ll be federal court only. Of course you can negotiate with a charging party or plaintiff at any time during the process.

There’s also the really rare chance that the EEOC does its own investigation once you respond to the charge. You’d have to work with your company to respond to all the lovely sorts of stuff the EEOC sends you and any depositions they decide to take. There’s even an more rare chance that the EEOC issues a notice that they have cause to believe there has been some sort of discrimination and they decide to sue you independently of whatever the charging party wants to do. In these cases you’re in for a fight.