Senior Employment Attorney

Most days tend to involve complex employment matters — major discrimination cases, executive employment agreements, policy development, workplace investigations, EEOC charges, or class-action defense — alongside supervising junior employment attorneys. You'll often handle senior matter work in the morning, engage with clients on strategic employment questions in the afternoon, and supervise associate work on active matters.

The hardest parts tend to be the substantive breadth of employment law and the emotional dimensions of workplace cases. Employment cases involve livelihoods, dignity, and the human dynamics of workplaces, and clients on both sides come in stressed. Practice settings vary widely — large-firm employment groups handle complex employer-side work; plaintiff-side employment boutiques represent employees; in-house employment counsel at large companies focus on policy and compliance; government employment-law practice (EEOC, DOL) operates differently.

People who tend to thrive here are substantively deep across statutes, comfortable with workplace human dynamics, skilled at strategic advice, and energized by complex cases. If you want pure transactional work or narrow specialty, employment law is broad. If you find satisfaction in being the senior voice on the legal questions that shape workplaces, the practice can be both intellectually rich and consistently in demand.