Lawrence P. Schaefer, Schaefer Halleen, LLC

What are the biggest challenges you currently see in employment law?

The current attack from the Trump Administration on DEI and attempts to roll-back discrimination protections — in particular, LGBTQ rights — presents a serious challenge to all advocates seeking to enforce these rights. While these attacks may make individual discrimination claims easier to prove, and direct evidence of bias may be more readily developed, the underlying message to the judiciary, especially at the federal level, is troubling, to say the least. This message is that employers no longer need to be proactive in fostering diversity, and that doing so actually results in discrimination against the majority class. This could have an impact on judges.

What are the biggest misconceptions about the field of employment law?

That the presumption of “at-will” employment restricts or otherwise limits the statutory protections at the federal, state and local level against discrimination and retaliation. This presumption goes out the window when these statutory protections are at issue, but an employer’s assertion of “at-will” discretion may dissuade many employees from seeking counsel and trying to enforce these rights.

Conversely, terminated employees are often surprised that there is no stand-alone protection against “wrongful termination.” That unfairness in the way you are treated in the workplace only matters legally if you can trace this unfairness to either statutory or common law rights.

Without revealing the names of a client, what is the most interesting case you’ve worked on lately?

A case on behalf of two claimants (a father and son) who were licensed brokers and thus subject to FINRA arbitration. Very complicated matter involving allegation of “poaching clients” as well as retaliatory termination. Long arbitration (nine days) and MANY exhibits and witnesses, given the interference with clients issue as well as the retaliatory termination.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

I was born in New York City, grew up on the East Coast (NY and Connecticut) and in Toronto, Canada, and spent a year as a nine-year-old living with my family in northern Italy. While I have lived in Minnesota since 1975 — apart from four years in Chicago for college — I have a pretty eclectic background.