Our Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Practice began nearly fifty years ago with our retention as co-counsel to various multiemployer pension and welfare funds. During the intervening years, the Employee Benefits Practice has grown to represent a large number of similar retirement and welfare plans jointly administered by labor and management. The multiemployer plans we regularly advise range in sizes of $1.7 million to several billion dollars in assets.
As our Employee Benefits Practice developed, we found that providing quality representation to fiduciaries requires input from a wide range of traditional legal disciplines including, tax, labor, litigation, securities, business and finance, banking, insurance, civil rights, regulated industries, and occasionally, international law.
We regularly advise multiemployer plan fiduciaries on investments; prohibited transactions; plan administration; selection of and contracting with providers; government filings; discussions with government officials; the design, negotiation and implementation of cost-saving and welfare plans; and other related matters. We have assisted with mergers and spinoffs of multiemployer and single-employer plans.
Morgan Lewis has a long and successful tradition of representing joint boards of trustees. In our experience, legal counsel of joint boards of trustees must not only provide quality technical advice, but must also communicate the advice in a pragmatic, consensus-building manner. Similarly, the joint boards we represent have staff, investment advisors, and actuaries with whom we must coordinate effectively during and between trustees’ meetings.