Skoler, Abbott & Presser Celebrates 60 Years in Employment Law
Attorneys at Work
From left: John Gannon, Meaghan Murphy, Timothy Murphy, Tracy Belanger, Deanna Sears, Marylou Fabbo, Melissa Theriaque, and Amelia Holstrom.
The website for Skoler, Abbott & Presser lists 23 distinct practice areas in the realm of employment and the workforce — everything from discrimination and harassment to handbooks and personnel policies; from employment litigation to labor relations; from immigration to workplace safety.
“It may look like it’s a very broad practice area, but it’s really not,” said John Gannon, one of the firm’s five partners. “I think it’s actually somewhat narrow, in that all we do is represent employers and businesses, and we represent them when they have issues related to their employees.”
Those issues fall into two buckets, he explained.
“There’s the labor side of things, if an employer has a union or is governed by a collective bargaining agreement; we have some folks in our office who specialize in that area. And for those employers that are non-union or not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, that’s general employment law, which is the other side of the house.”
John Gannon
“It may look like it’s a very broad practice area, but it’s really not. I think it’s actually somewhat narrow, in that all we do is represent employers and businesses, and we represent them when they have issues related to their employees.”
Elaborating, he noted that Skoler Abbott represents employers who are being sued by an employee or an administrative agency, like the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
“But we also provide a lot of day-to-day counseling on different issues. Like, ‘this employee requests an accommodation because they have a medical condition. What do we need to do? Do we need to give them time off? Do we need to give them a different type of computer software?’ Things like that. It’s broad in the sense that we represent everything in the employment context, but it’s really just employment law.”
That said, the legal landscape for workplaces has changed significantly over the past six decades, and as Skoler Abbott celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, four of its attorneys sat down with BusinessWest to talk about some of those changes.
“When I started out here, there was no such thing as a wage-hour claim. Now, that’s really a booming area for us, with the treble damages that Massachusetts affords to those claims,” said Marylou Fabbo, a partner who is coming up on 30 years with the firm. “There was also very little sexual harassment. There were no claims of disability discrimination. So it’s really evolved, and things have become more employee-friendly. There are more laws, and while many laws were on the books then, they weren’t really enforced.
“So, over the years that I’ve been here, employees have become much more knowledgeable about their rights, and employees’ attorneys are making sure that the employees’ rights are upheld,” she went on. “And we’re finding that a lot of our practice is now focused on preventive measures such as trainings to supervisors and management, more handbook reviews, things like that, whereas before, when I first started here, we were just defending cases, like breach of contract, very basic things. The issues we face have definitely gotten a lot more complex.”
Marylou Fabbo
“A lot of our practice is now focused on preventive measures such as trainings to supervisors and management, more handbook reviews, things like that, whereas before, when I first started here, we were just defending cases, like breach of contract, very basic things. The issues we face have definitely gotten a lot more complex.”
That has made the work more challenging, said Amelia Holstrom, another partner — and the ground is ever-shifting.
“I’ve been here since 2012, and when I first got here, there were very few leave laws. I mean, there was the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and a handful of others,” she noted. “But since 2015, we’ve added earned sick time and domestic-violence leave, and our parental leave act changed, and we have paid family and medical leave now.
“The majority of what I deal with, for phone calls from clients, is just walking them through: ‘I have an employee out, and I don’t know what to do next,’ or ‘is this job-protected time?’ and advising them on next steps and those statutes where it’s all job-protected leave. That’s been a challenge for employers, so I deal with that a lot.”
Brief Overview
Gannon and his fellow partners noted that aggrieved employees have more tools today, and more understanding of them. One, Gannon said, is a surge of fee-shifting provisions, through which a prevailing attorney can recover fees from the other side.
“That’s a big driver in some of these cases, particularly in wage-and-hour cases,” he noted. “The amount of unpaid wages may not be that much; it might be five or six thousand dollars. But the employee’s attorney knows, if they take the case all the way to trial, and they succeed, the attorney’s fees could be three, four, or five times that, maybe even more.”
Amelia Holstrom
“It has been personally gratifying building long-term relationships with clients over the years. I help them with their issues when they call, but I’ve also I’ve gotten to know them.”
The work environment has changed as well, Fabbo said.
“Back in the ’80s, when I was in high school, it was hard to even find a job. You’d go to the mall and walk around forever. So I think a lot of employees were afraid to assert their rights in fear of getting terminated or retaliated against because it wasn’t as easy as it is now to go find a new job.
“But I think, over the years, the work environment has changed,” she added. “There are a lot more opportunities for employees. And as John said, with the fee shifting, there are a lot of attorneys out there willing to represent them.”
Attorney Meaghan Murphy, who joined the firm in 2020, added that another evolution has occurred in the varying expectations different generations have in the workplace, particularly regarding what’s acceptable conduct and what employees are expected to deal with.
“Employees are more willing to assert their rights because there are no-retaliation provisions under most of the employment laws we deal with,” she explained. “So an employee who makes a complaint of sexual harassment, for example, cannot be retaliated against. There’s an added protection.
“But I also think, in the last 10 or 20 years, employees are coming of age expecting better behavior, more fairness, more equity in the workplace than generations before them, and that may be part of the reason why there’s an increase in claims against employers.”
Holstrom said the fact that everyone now has the internet in their pocket makes a difference as well, with employees able to quickly look up what the laws are.
Meaghan Murphy
“I don’t take personal offense that they have to call me and they’re not looking forward to that conversation. Sometimes they’re like, ‘no offense, but I hope I don’t have to call you again.’ I’m like, ‘none taken; that’s fine.’ I get it.”
“It isn’t always correct, depending on what they’re looking at, but it makes employees more likely to say, ‘oh, something happened.’ They’re a lot more knowledgeable than they were previously when they couldn’t look those things up outside of a book.”
Beyond that, Gannon added, “they’re not only going to look up on their phone what the law says, they’ll also probably be able to find something that says, ‘hey, this person got 10 million dollars as a result of this judgment.’ So the more information that’s out there, at a worker’s fingertips, the more they’re going to exercise their rights.”
Because of this new paradigm, Skoler Abbott’s work to be proactive with clients is more important than ever.
“We help employees craft their handbooks in a way that makes sure they’re fair to the employees, as well as including all the legal things they need to include in the handbook,” Fabbo noted. “We do a lot of training of supervisors and management, keeping them apprised of laws and best practices. We speak to a lot of employment groups, giving them updates on the law. We’ll speak to their members, and we’ll attend their breakfast briefings on a regular basis to hear what their issues are, too, which is good for us, so we know what issues employers are facing.”
Armed with that knowledge, she went on, “we’ll help employers draft policies, help them draft effective disciplinary action forms, let them know what they need to post, basically anything they need. And if they call us with a question — ‘someone’s intoxicated at work; what do we do?’ — we help them with that.”
While changing laws and a more empowered workforce certainly make things challenging, they have also created more awareness among employers of the need to do the right thing. And if litigation does develop, Gannon said, Skoler Abbott will work with clients to get cases resolved early, through mediation or just having conversations with the opposing side.
“They know that, when we go into court, we’ve done our homework. We’re not just showing up and making arguments just to make arguments.”
“The reality is, very few cases do end up going to trial, but some do. One of the things we tell our clients is, ‘you’re going to have disgruntled employees who are going to file claims. It just happens.’ A lot of businesses have to deal with these claims, and there are strategies that we work on with our clients, not only for avoiding litigation, but, if it does develop, how can we nip this in the bud early and reach a resolution that everybody’s happy with?”
Appealing Work
Over its 60 years of practice, Skoler Abbott has certainly had many notable wins in court, from a seminal case in the mid-’90s dealing with same-sex sexual harassment to the 2012 case that determined that indefinite leave of absence is not a reasonable accommodation for a disability.
The partners understand that many of their successful court cases aren’t exactly headline grabbers because they wind up with no big, million-dollar payout that catches the public’s attention. “A verdict for the defense means no money,” Murphy said. “So people don’t see them, but it’s a pretty big deal to us, and obviously to our clients.”
That’s gratifying, said Gannon, who has been with Skoler Abbott since 2011, but so is the day-to-day interactions with people. “Everybody has a job, and everybody has issues that come up at work. And I honestly do enjoy talking to clients about the everyday issues that come up.”
Meanwhile, he added, “we have a very collegial environment where I can go into Marylou’s office, or I can go into Amelia or Meaghan’s office, and say, ‘hey, have you ever had a case like this? Have you ever had an issue like this?’ And we talk about it and share our experiences and our opinions on things. I love working here, and I love what I do.”
Holstrom appreciates the personal interactions as well.
“It has been personally gratifying building long-term relationships with clients over the years. I help them with their issues when they call, but I’ve also I’ve gotten to know them. I know that they have kids, and I’ve heard about them growing up and going to college, and they also know about my kids. And I like working with them long-term and continuing to develop that relationship.”
Added Gannon, “there’s nothing more gratifying than when a client calls you up and says ‘thank you.’ Whether it’s because you defended them at trial successfully or because you helped them through a challenging situation with a particular problematic employee, we get it.”
Murphy said many dealings between employers and attorneys come at a stressful time, and they understand that.
“I don’t take personal offense that they have to call me and they’re not looking forward to that conversation,” she said. “Sometimes they’re like, ‘no offense, but I hope I don’t have to call you again.’ I’m like, ‘none taken; that’s fine.’ I get it.”
One thing the entire team prides itself on, Gannon said, is having a very good understanding of the law and then applying it to the benefit of clients.
“We’re not just telling them what the law is. We’re also giving them practical advice on what they need to do as a result of this law.”
The #MeToo movement of the late 2010s was one example of a shift in employer behavior. While the number of sexual-harassment claims didn’t spike in Massachusetts, the increased awareness of the issue in the public eye had employers acting proactively.
“Surprisingly, in Massachusetts, there’s no obligation to provide sexual-harassment training to your supervisors like there are in some other states,” Holstrom said. “But I did see a lot of clients, even through COVID, doing trainings for their supervisors on sexual harassment and what their obligations are to report it and take prompt steps to investigate and stop the conduct.”
Murphy agreed. “There’s more general awareness and less of an acceptance of certain workplace conduct than there used to be. And I think individual people are inclined to speak up in the moment more than they were before, maybe because there’s a sense that they’ll get more support than they used to.”
At the end of the day, Skoler Abbott represents employers, not workers, but understands that staying on the right side of the law is good for everyone — and certainly makes for less stressful, and more successful, workplaces.
“Agencies like the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and judges in the area respect us,” Gannon said. “They know that, when we go into court, we’ve done our homework. We’re not just showing up and making arguments just to make arguments. They know that we counsel our clients well, and we do good work.”
