Profile
Karen Gillen is an employment lawyer who understands the challenges employers face and quickly identifies cost-effective and practical strategies for overcoming those challenges. Karen’s background, both in private practice and in-house roles; dedication to client service; and, commitment to handling legal problems make her an invaluable partner to employers. She works side-by-side with clients to find the right strategies and approaches for each individual client, understanding there is no one-size-fits-all strategy or approach.
Karen works with publicly held, privately held, and family-owned businesses in a variety of industries including financial services, media and entertainment, technology, aviation, property management, and construction, among others. She has worked with single-state employers and global companies with employees throughout the world.
Guiding Employers Through Employment-Related Problems
Karen is a trusted advisor and strategic partner to clients and their allied advisors, assisting with compliance, sensitive investigations, executive departures, classification issues, workforce reductions, termination decisions, and many others. Clients turn to Karen for guidance on cutting-edge issues where there has been little or no precedential guidance. She has tackled issues relating to COVID-19 and various executive orders, and she is always ready for the next “new” issue.
Karen also advises on employment and labor issues in transactions. She conducts due diligence in mergers and acquisitions, advises on restrictive covenants and executive departures, and drafts employment, severance, and other agreements.
Litigating Employment-Related Disputes
Karen defends employers in class, representative, and collective actions, and single and multi-plaintiff lawsuits. She litigates a range of claims including discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, breach of employment contract, and ERISA, to name a few. Karen represents employers in federal and state courts, and arbitration proceedings before FINRA, AAA, and JAMS.
Karen represents employers before administrative agencies, appearing before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, and several state and local administrative agencies.
Concentrations
- Employment law compliance and multistate strategies
- Strategic approaches to workplace problems
- Creating, modifying, and implementing employment-related policies and procedures
- Investigations into ethics hotline and workplace complaints
- Disability accommodations
- Transactional aspects of employment law (drafting employment, executive departure, separation, and other agreements, and conducting due diligence in mergers and acquisitions)
- Employment litigation
The attorney is providing legal services through and affiliated with Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a New York Limited Liability Partnership. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Capabilities
Experience
- Served as the associate general counsel at American Airlines, leading the employment legal team responsible for global employment issues, immigration, and benefits throughout the merger of US Airways and American Airlines and beyond.°
- Served as the first fully dedicated global labor and employment lawyer to a publicly-held medical-device company.°
- Partnered with a Fortune 500 company to build from the ground up and implement its disability accommodation processes and procedures. Trained employees on those processes and procedures.°
- Conducted or advised on numerous sensitive investigations including those involving the C-suite.°
- Worked with employers of all sizes to design handbooks and anti-discrimination, accommodation, and leave policies.°
- Devised strategies in unionized and non-unionized environments for minimizing risks relative to 50-state compliance issues including wage deductions, recovery of overpayments, sick leave, and vacation.°
- Advised acquirer of third-party hotel management company on, and performed due diligence relating to, labor and employment issues.°
- Obtained dismissal of a complaint alleging breach of a collective bargaining agreement, collusion with a union’s alleged breach of duty of fair representation, and ERISA violations.°
- Defeated summary judgment in a case challenging the application of the Massachusetts Earned Sick Time Law as applied to airlines. The client later prevailed at trial.°
- Obtained summary judgment on behalf of a corporation and its fiduciaries in a lawsuit alleging that the corporation’s 401k plan option violated ERISA, and successfully defended that ruling on appeal.°
- Opposed class certification in a lawsuit alleging that a defined benefit plan’s older mortality tables used to calculate a retiree’s joint and survivor annuity resulted in a substantially lower retirement benefit than if the plan used updated mortality tables.°
- Assisted in negotiating a Consent Decree between the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and publicly held companies to end federal court litigation alleging violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.°
- Defended employers on numerous occasions before FINRA, JAMS, and AAA.°
- Obtained dismissal of charges and negotiated favorable outcomes before a variety of administrative agencies including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, the New York State Division of Human Rights, the New York City Human Rights Commission, and the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights.°
°The above representations were handled by Ms. Gillen prior to her joining Greenberg Traurig, LLP.
- Senior Lead Counsel, Labor & Employment, Align Technology, Inc., 2023-2024
- Associate General Counsel, Employment & Benefits, American Airlines, Inc., 2013-2019
- US Airways, Inc. (now American Airlines, Inc.) 2008-2013
- Managing Director – Legal Affairs, 2009-2013
- Director – Legal Affairs, 2008-2009
- Law Clerk, Arizona Court of Appeals, 1996-1997
Recognition & Leadership
- Member, Arizona State Bar Association
- Member, New Jersey State Bar Association
- Member, New York City Bar Association
Credentials
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J.D., magna cum laude, Arizona State University College of Law
- Order of the Coif
- Note and Comment Editor, The Arizona State University Law Journal
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B.S., high honors, Rutgers University - Newark
- Phi Beta Kappa
- Arizona
- New Jersey
- New York
- U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona
- U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey
- U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
- U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit