In House Counsel, Employment Law, Burlington Stores, Inc.

My name is Talesha Danberville and I'm in house Employment Litigation Council at Burlington Stores Inc. So, my role, I oversee all aspects of our employment litigation portfolio. So we are in 45 states and Puerto Rico with 675 odd stores throughout the country and 50,000 employees. I live in the world of employment discrimination. So that's your alphabet soup of employment law. So, title seven which protects employees that race, gender, sex, disability under the ADA, age under the ADEA. So there's an alphabet soup of it that we call it. So it's all of your acronyms. But they protect a large variety of what we call protected characteristics. And that also includes wage and hour cases which are my huge class actions. So normally in an employment context you have to exhaust your administrative remedies. So without geeking out on you it really means that you have to file first with an administrative level. So those first come to my desk, I investigate, and I file the company's response, which is a narrative response. If the employee is dissatisfied with the results at the administrative level, they then normally get council and they file a lawsuit or they initiate an arbitration. And it just depends on whether or not they're covered by our arbitration program. And then that process runs through your traditional if you see it on Law & Order style litigation. Which is we are investigating again, gathering documents. We're sending discovery requests, so getting information from the other side. We're taking depositions which often include taped depositions. So these are things I would use at trial later. And then I'm filing a motion. And hopefully that's successful and, if not, then I'm in front of a judge quite literally litigating the case. And so that's me personally doing it. Same life cycle if outside council does it, but I manage them. So involved in high level strategy, litigation decisions, overview and review of filings but not physically myself being in the court arguing them. My home base is Philadelphia so I travel up there for the corporate office. But I travel all around the country for cases. I currently, if I'm thinking about it, I have cases in California, which is pretty much a hot bed for employment litigation issues. So I spend, I probably go to California once a month.