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But several major business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce and Society for Human Resource Management, oppose it. In-house counsel positions can be really rewarding when they’re the right fit for you.
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The arguments proponents have made in support of the measure apply largely to exempt employees, said Ashley Hoffman, senior policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce. “As exempt employees, we’re paid a salary for doing our work whenever we need to,” she said. Some days, that might mean leaving mid-afternoon to pick up a child from school and then logging into work later that evening to finish up the day’s to-do list. Many in-house counsel roles are more generalist than many lawyers would expect--especially after working in a highly specialized practice area in a law firm. A worker could complain to the state labor commissioner if their employer commits “a pattern of violation,” meaning three or more documented instances of violating the worker’s right to disconnect, according to the legislative text. “We have strict requirements about how much that worker must be paid and what kind of job duties they must be doing to get that flexibility that comes with being an exempt worker,” she said.
‘Right to Disconnect’ Plan in California Hits Employer Backlash
New York City and Washington state previously considered “right to disconnect” proposals but didn’t enact them. The Office of Fiscal and Management Analysis, a nonpartisan research and support staff to the Indiana General Assembly, is accepting applications for a fiscal/program analyst, including a senior-level fiscal/program analyst. Expertise in subject areas relating to criminal law, corrections, court operations, environmental policy/regulations, and energy and utilities are preferred. Once you’ve identified the best-fit in-house role, you’ll need to make a compelling case for how your transferable skills will provide tangible value to the organization. For whatever reason, lawyers tend to view in-house roles as a monolith in which every in-house counsel job is pretty much the same.And that couldn’t be further from the truth.
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Fiscal/Program Analyst - Senior Fiscal/Program Analyst
It’s also unclear whether a manager or a coworker sending a message after hours would be a violation, or only if the company penalizes workers for not responding to after-hours communications, Groff said. Not only are they dealing with new federal labor regulations—some of which redefine the employment relationship between company and worker—but a patchwork of labor policies is quickly developing in the states on a number of issues. France’s right-to-disconnect law has been in effect since 2017, but employment lawyers said a shift in corporate culture might be what’s needed in the US more than legislation. The shift to more remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the mindset that employees are always available via email, text message, and other digital communications, said Aymara Ledezma, attorney with Fisher & Phillips LLP in Los Angeles.
For work beyond 12 hours per day, the overtime pay increases to double the worker’s usual hourly rate. I’m a former attorney and experienced career coach helping lawyers find and land jobs they actually like—legal, non-legal, and everything in-between. Employment lawyers are increasingly hearing from workers about the blurred boundaries around work hours, Mariko Yoshihara, legislative counsel and policy director for the California Employment Lawyers Association, told lawmakers at the April 17 committee hearing. The bill (AB 2751) would require employers to identify specific work hours for their employees and prohibit them from demanding workers respond to communications outside those hours, except for emergencies and scheduling changes. Whether you’re a GC or a CLO, leading a team of three or 300, in-house counsel tell Bloomberg Law reporters that on labor and employment issues, the constant addition of regulation is their biggest headache. Attorney-turned-career coach helping lawyers find and land jobs the actually like.
“If you’re a client-facing industry, this could be a very hard law to jibe with your business,” said Susan E. Groff, attorney with Jackson Lewis P.C. Find employment opportunities with legislatures, states and public policy organizations. It’s going to open your eyes to your many transferable skills and how you can leverage them to get into your ideal in-house counsel job.
Why So Many Lawyers Want In-House Counsel Jobs
Most of us lawyers have this notion of in-house counsel being the “Promised Land” of work/life balance, but not all in-house roles are created equally. The bill seems likely to undergo revisions through the legislative process and could ultimately exempt some state and local government agencies such as law enforcement. The proposal to exempt after-hours communications for emergencies is confusing and unclear, Rosenquist said, in terms of the definition of emergency and how that communication would work in practice.
Salaried employees typically have more flexibility with no strictly set work schedule like the one the bill requires employers to establish. Legislative staff for the Assembly’s Labor and Employment Committee recommended Haney amend the legislation so that the “right to disconnect” wouldn’t apply at all to salaried professionals who are exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws. For hourly workers, California law already includes stronger protections than federal statutes, such as overtime pay calculated daily for hours beyond eight per day.
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It can be an all hands on deck situation where the in-house counsel are working law firm style nights and weekends. So when an urgent legal issue arises, there usually isn’t a deep bench of lawyers to call upon. In the wake of the Great Recession in 2009, most legal departments were ruthlessly downsized and since then more has been expected of in-house lawyers with fewer resources. “In order to determine if it’s an emergency, the employee has to read the email,” she said. Labor groups TechEquity and the United Food and Commercial Workers back the measure.
Employees also could feel pressure by the nature of their jobs to continue monitoring and responding to after-hours communications, even if the law theoretically says they don’t have to. The bill calls for employers and employees to establish what counts as “nonworking hours” by written agreement, but doesn’t set any limits on how they define that term. The US Department of Labor is close to finalizing a rule to expand federal overtime protections, but would still cover a smaller portion of workers than California’s law. Since then, Annie has helped hundreds of lawyers land, lead, and succeed in the legal profession and beyond.
US workers traditionally have other legal protections against nonstop work expectations, such as overtime laws that require businesses to pay them one-and-a-half times their regular rate for hours beyond 40 per week. But many office-professional and managerial positions are paid a fixed salary and considered exempt from overtime laws. “Communications, media, public relations, social media managers, or public affairs positions essentially exist to respond in real time to news,” Hoffman wrote in the California Chamber’s letter of opposition. That also could mean their employers would set those employees’ working hours as 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she said. The California bill would apply to salaried as well as hourly workers, which is a strange policy choice that would complicate compliance, said employment attorney Joy Rosenquist of Littler Mendelson P.C.
