Offered a Severance Agreement? Know Your Rights First.
Before Signing Away Compensation, Let Our Employment Attorneys Review Your Agreement.
Severance agreements are typically crafted by the employer’s attorneys with one primary goal: protecting the employer’s interests. Even if you successfully negotiated for certain benefits or financial compensation, the fine print in these agreements is almost always designed to favor your employer. Companies often offer severance agreements under circumstances that might otherwise lead to legal disputes.
This means that if you’ve ever had potential employment claims—such as not being paid overtime, denied rest or meal breaks, or facing other violations—you could be signing away your right to pursue compensation for those issues.
The critical question to ask yourself is: why would your employer rather offer you a payment now than risk going to court? The answer is often strategic. By settling with you upfront, they avoid the possibility of paying more through litigation and sidestep the risk of negative publicity that might arise from a lawsuit.
Don’t let your employer take advantage of you. Contact us today for a thorough review of your severance agreement and expert advice on your options.
How can our employment and contract attorneys help when a severance agreement has been offered?
Our skilled employment contract lawyers have a combined 20+ years of experience helping clients get the compensation they deserve from their employers. Below are a number of ways we can assist you:
- Review and translate the agreement into plain language to ensure you aren’t being taken advantage of. Employer’s attorneys often word agreements in certain ways to bind you to giving up rights you don’t realize are being signed away. Our lawyers can recognize this tricky wording and flag it for you to make sure you are only agreeing to the terms you mean to.
- Negotiate for a better severance offer on your behalf or suggest changes to the wording/terms to better protect your rights. If you’d like, we can communicate back and forth with your employer on your behalf to make sure you aren’t harassed or pressured into an agreement you don’t want. We’ll keep you informed of negotiations as they happen and you can sit back and let us do the work for you. If you’d prefer to do your own negotiations, we can also act as consulting counsel for you. We can point out red flag areas of the contract and suggest better terms.
- Review your employment experience for claims you could possibly get more money from if you pursued them in court. Severance agreements are typically drafted so the employer can pay you outright a lower sum for your employment/termination claims than you could win in a lawsuit. We can analyze the terms of your employment/termination and advise you on the likelihood of victory if you pursue your claims in court.
- Pursue your employment claims in court to get you the compensation you are entitled to receive. With a combined 20+ years of experience in employment litigation, our powerhouse attorneys will draft a lawsuit, conduct discovery, appear in court, and represent you in all ways in an employment suit. Sometimes, pursuing claims in court can net you a higher settlement than the severance offer the employer gave you.
Built on Integrity, Driven by Results, Committed to You Our Guiding Principles
-
Innovative Legal StrategiesOur team combines creative problem-solving with compassionate counsel to guide you through every step of your legal journey.
-
Experience You Can Count OnWith decades of combined legal expertise, we confidently navigate complex cases to protect your rights and achieve favorable outcomes.
-
Personalized Advocacy, Proven ResultsWe deliver customized legal solutions backed by a track record of success, ensuring your unique needs are always our top priority.
-
No Win, No Fee – Your Justice GuaranteedWe believe in your case and stand by you with a contingency fee structure—no legal fees unless we secure a win for you.
Is there any benefit for me in accepting the Severance Agreement?
There certainly can be! However, employer attorneys often try to take advantage of the layperson’s lack of knowledge regarding what they’re entitled to. Some of the benefits an employer may offer you are:
Severance Payment
This is a common term of severance agreements in which your employer will offer a lump-sum amount to represent your pay for a specified amount of time. Typically, this is not more than a couple months as it is meant to cover you until you find work elsewhere. However, what if there’s a pandemic or a job shortage and you are unable to find other work? This one-time payment could quickly not be able to cover you until you find another job.
Unemployment Benefits
Your employer may agree not to dispute your claim for unemployment benefits by characterizing the end of your employment as a “resignation”. However, this may not be the benefit it seems. Employees who “voluntarily resign” are generally unable to obtain unemployment benefits anyways.