Learn more about the selection process for inclusion in Martindale-Hubbell, Chambers and Partners, Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, and others.
Establishing and maintaining employee benefit plans and executive compensation programs can be time-consuming and complex. Verrill’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation group provides high-touch legal services to large and mid-size employers, both for-profit and non-profit, across a wide variety of industries. We are deeply engaged in every client relationship, seeking to understand each client’s immediate needs, long-term goals, and risk tolerance to deliver practical advice within a framework of legal compliance.
We counsel employers, executives, and financial services providers in all aspects of ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and other laws that govern the design and administration of retirement plans, health and welfare benefit plans, executive compensation arrangements, equity-based compensation programs, and fringe benefit plans. We also advise buyers, sellers, and investors in mergers and acquisitions. Mindful that plan sponsors and individuals involved in employee benefits matters sometimes have more than one role in a given situation, we keep a sharp focus on fiduciary governance issues without limiting the ability of our clients to make business decisions that promote the success of their organizations.
Our institutional client base includes hospitals and health care systems; colleges and universities; employee-owned companies; publicly traded companies, including multinational corporations, banking, financial, and insurance organizations; and churches and church-affiliated organizations. Our client relationships are characterized by collaboration and longevity, with a service team that typically includes at least two attorneys to promote highly responsive and reliable service. Whether interactions are weekly, monthly, or episodic, we seek to provide the kind of support that allows our clients to make and implement decisions with confidence.
The technical abilities of individual lawyers in our Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation group and the group itself have been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America©, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, New England Super Lawyers, and by Martindale-Hubbell. But what sets us apart is our commitment to providing actionable, value-added advice based on an understanding of each client’s unique culture, needs, and goals.
People
Experience
Verrill’s EBEC team regularly supports the work of attorneys from other law firms that do not have employee benefits and executive compensation capability in house. We have been asked to collaborate with outside attorneys in corporate transactions and other projects that require our special expertise. Those attorneys trust us to deliver for their clients while respecting their existing relationships.
A well-known Catholic fraternal benefit society, and long-time Verrill client, engaged our EBEC group to help redesign pension benefits for its employees. Our team worked closely with the client and its actuary to design and implement customized cash balance formulas in three separate defined benefit pension plans. This intricate project involved negotiating with labor counsel, drafting plan amendments, and ensuring compliance with ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. The new design is to yield...
Verrill's EBEC group played a central role in supporting the integration of the many retirement plans maintained by a major regional health system following a significant corporate merger. We worked with the client’s consultants and investment advisors in harmonizing plan designs, administrative processes, and investment options, and handled all necessary contract reviews, employee disclosures, and plan amendments for more than two dozen defined contribution plans of various types. This...
We advised a large physician network regarding the employee benefits and executive compensation aspects of its acquisition by a subsidiary of one of the largest health insurance companies in the country. The complex transaction involved regulatory scrutiny at federal and state levels and required adept handling of several unique challenges, given the client’s tax-exempt status. Our work included extensive legal analysis and documentation to support the preservation of certain executive...
Verrill advises several Fortune 500 companies regarding health and welfare plan legal compliance matters. Our team helps these large and demanding employers navigate a wide variety of legal compliance challenges, including COVID-19 vaccination incentives, establishment of a robust fiduciary governance structure, health plan amendments and related disclosures, and integration of acquired entities and dovetailing of benefit plans.
For more than 25 years, Verrill has served as outside employee benefits counsel to a large, publicly traded insurance company. We helped this client develop a pioneering emergency savings vehicle within its 401(k) plan, which goes beyond the more limited distribution opportunity made available recently under SECURE 2.0. This initiative was designed to alleviate employee financial stress, which was significantly heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic, and mitigate retirement plan leakage. To...
We were engaged by a Fortune 500 manufacturing company to provide legal and compliance services regarding its group health and welfare benefit plans. During the course of our representation, we have advised the company with respect to several significant matters including its COVID-19 vaccination incentive programs, creating a health and welfare benefit plans fiduciary committee, amending and restating the comprehensive summary plan description for its health and welfare benefit program,...
We advised a major Massachusetts health system regarding the harmonization and rationalization of more than two dozen defined contribution plans with participant-directed investments, which were the combined legacy of several mergers by which the health system was created. The plans had diverse investment option menus and the plans themselves are of varying types, each of which carries its own legal restrictions on permissible investment types. Employees within the system frequently participate...
We represented the largest physician network in Massachusetts in the employee benefits and executive compensation aspects of its acquisition by one of the largest health care companies in the United States. After several rounds of federal and state regulatory review, the transaction closed in 2022. In connection with the transaction, we advised the client regarding the full range of employee benefits and executive compensation issues that commonly arise in the mergers and acquisitions setting...
Resources
Events