What does an employment attorney do? Plaintiff, management and labor sides

The core of the job is the employment relationship itself: employment attorneys advise, negotiate, investigate and litigate the issues that arise between employers and the people who work for them.

What that means in practice depends heavily on which side of the relationship the attorney serves, but the building blocks of the work are shared across sides.

The building blocks:

• Counseling. Advising a client through a workplace decision or dispute — a termination under discussion, a complaint, a pay question, a departure — and translating the legal position into plain, usable advice.
• Investigations. Looking into workplace complaints on behalf of an employer, or examining how an employer handled one on behalf of an employee who says the process failed.
• Contracts and policies. Drafting and negotiating offer letters, employment and separation agreements, and the handbooks and policies an employer runs on — the counseling end of the practice.
• Litigation. Carrying a dispute through a court or an arbitration: pleadings, discovery, depositions, motion practice, mediation and, when a case gets there, trial.
• Agency work. Employment practice also includes proceedings before government agencies — civil-rights and labor agencies among them — where attorneys prepare filings, positions and appearances.
• Negotiation and settlement. Working out resolutions short of a decision — severance terms, settlement agreements, policy changes — is a standing part of the practice on every side.

The sides change the emphasis more than the tasks: employee-side work centers on evaluating and building claims, while employer-side work centers on counseling, compliance questions and defending matters already filed.

The issues are the same on both sides; the desk they are handled from is opposite.

Employment law is practiced from several kinds of shops, and the employer shapes the job as much as the subject matter does.

• Plaintiff-side firms. Firms that represent employees — solo practitioners and plaintiff-side employment boutiques among them — evaluating potential claims, negotiating with employers and defense counsel, and litigating individual and group cases.
• Management-side firms. Firms that represent employers, from dedicated labor and employment boutiques to the employment groups inside large firms. The work runs from day-to-day counseling to defending lawsuits and agency proceedings.
• In-house legal departments. Some employers staff employment attorneys inside their own legal departments, handling internal complaints, policies, training and outside-counsel management.
• Government agencies. The EEOC and the NLRB at the federal level — alongside state fair-employment and labor agencies — are part of this practice's map, as attorney employers and as the forums where agency-side work happens.
• Unions and union-side firms. The labor side of the practice — organizing, bargaining and representation matters — is a setting of its own, alongside the employee-side and employer-side firms.
• Solo and small-firm practice. Small firms and solo practices may combine employment matters with other civil work, and a solo employment practice is a path for attorneys building their own client base.

An honest caveat on numbers: our research found no verified count of how many attorneys practice employment law.

In the federal data our sources describe, lawyers are a single occupation with no split of attorney employment by practice area, so our research has no per-practice-area headcount to quote.

Treat any precise count you encounter with caution.

The credential that starts the career is the law license.

Employment attorneys are licensed like other attorneys — admission is run state by state, by each state's admitting authority — and the license is the same one behind what attorneys do in any practice area.

What changes by practice area is the subject matter and the skills built on top.

On top of the license, our research on practice-area credentials found no separate employment-law credential.

The two federal practice areas where it did verify a separate credential system were immigration — where federal regulations accept a license from any one state for the federal side of immigration practice — and patent practice, where registration with the USPTO calls for legal, scientific and technical qualifications and the registration exam, unless the exam is waived.

Employment practice carries no equivalent in our research.

Optional state board certification exists for practice areas, but our research did not verify which states or subjects it covers — ask your state bar what it offers.

The skills the work runs on:

• Employment litigation craft. Discovery, depositions, motions and arbitration are the mechanics of workplace disputes, and strong attorneys are strong here first.
• Counseling judgment. Clients call with live problems — a complaint, a termination under discussion, a restructuring — and useful advice is quick, practical and honest about uncertainty.
• Investigation. Running or reviewing a workplace investigation is a distinct skill: interviews, documentation, credibility calls and a written product that holds up later.
• Negotiation. Severance terms, settlements and policy changes get negotiated on every side of the practice, and the results shape clients' options.
• Writing. Demand letters, agency position statements, briefs, handbooks and policies — much of the practice's product is written.
• Subject fluency. The frameworks a practice touches — discrimination and harassment, wage and hour, leave and accommodation, retaliation, reductions in force — learned deeply enough to spot an issue before the client names it.

Start with the same caveat as the headcount question: our research found no public benchmark for how many matters an employment attorney carries.

The federal data our sources describe treats lawyers as a single occupation, with no split by practice area, so there is no verified caseload statistic for employment practice — treat any precise number you encounter with caution.

What shapes the workload is legible even without the numbers:

• How the firm charges. Contingency, hourly and flat-fee arrangements shape the file load differently.
• Litigation stage. A matter in discovery fills a week differently than one waiting on a hearing, and trial-bound files reshape the calendar around themselves.
• Agency calendars. Matters pending with an agency run on that agency's clock, alongside the court's deadlines.
• Support. Paralegals, legal assistants and eDiscovery support shape how much of the work lands on the attorney's desk.

Because no published number answers the question for a specific firm, ask it directly in interviews: how many active matters attorneys carry, how cases are staffed, and how deposition and trial time is shared between senior and junior lawyers.

Employment lawyer vs. labor lawyer.

The titles blur in the market, but the traditional split runs along the union relationship.

Labor lawyers work the collective side — organizing, bargaining, contract enforcement and proceedings before labor agencies — while employment lawyers center on disputes between an individual worker and an employer: discrimination, pay, leave, terminations.

In practice the two overlap, and job titles don't always track the distinction.

HR professionals.

Human resources handles workplace issues day to day, but the attorney's role is distinct: legal advice, investigation and advocacy in court or before an agency.

Careers cross between the two fields.

Other civil litigators.

Employment work sits on the same plaintiff/defense map as the rest of civil practice: the machinery — discovery, motions, mediation, trial — is common ground, and the subject matter is what makes the role distinct.

In-house employment counsel.

A law-firm employment practice and an in-house employment role share the subject but differ in position: in-house counsel advises one employer full time, manages outside firms and sits inside the client's decisions rather than across the table from them.

The short version: an undergraduate degree, law school, and admission to the bar in the state where you intend to practice — the same law license other attorneys hold.

From there, aim the early years at the practice itself: clinics and internships with employment or civil-rights dockets, judicial clerkships, agency placements, and junior seats at plaintiff-side or management-side firms, whichever side you're aiming at.

Pay data has the same practice-area problem as the headcount: the figures our research can point to cover lawyers as a single occupation (the lawyer occupation, SOC 23-1011), not employment law separately, so our research has no employment-attorney figure to quote.

Our employment attorney salary page lists what the data does show for that occupation.

Within the field, earnings track the variables this page has already covered — side of the practice, firm type, geography, the litigation-versus-counseling mix, and years of experience.

Compare the whole structure, not the headline number.

LawFirmHires lists employment attorney jobs at law firms, and the listing page is the fastest way to see who is hiring right now — the site also lists the legal-staff roles that support an employment practice, from paralegals to legal assistants.

As you compare openings, weigh the things that actually shape an employment career:

Employment law is also a networked career: bar association labor and employment sections, plaintiff and defense trial lawyer associations, and the counsel you appear alongside all feed the next move.

Career information, not legal advice — this page describes the job, not what to do in your own workplace matter, and licensing specifics belong to the bar admission authority in your state.