Karen L. Corman

Corman defends employers in federal and state court and agency proceedings in individual and class action wage and hour, discrimination, harassment and wrongful discharge litigation. She also handles arbitration and mediation and advises on internal investigations and executive severance negotiations.

Clients include Intel Corp., Yahoo Inc., Oaktree Capital Management LP, Gilead Sciences Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and The Walt Disney Co.

She also structures highly complex employment aspects of global transactions, which often require orchestration of country-specific rules and regulations including procedures for hiring and terminating employees, the negotiation of new collective bargaining agreements and the assumption of existing agreements.

Speaking of Intel’s $4.2 billion transaction last year with private equity firm TPG Capital in which the parties spun out and stood up Intel’s internet security unit McAfee Inc., Corman said complexities arise from overseas nations’ varied legal landscapes.

“With all the protective legislation in Europe and elsewhere, including data privacy laws, immigration restrictions and other statutes, things get complicated,” she said. “In Saudi Arabia, for example, there is a rule that all companies have to have a certain percentage of Saudi employees. In Malaysia, there are strict rules about how many hours women can work.”

She was instrumental in the transfer of the employment of thousands of employees who supported the McAfee business in more than 50 jurisdictions globally. Corman said the massive cross-border deal presented complex labor and employment-related issues, including automatic employment transfers, terminations and offers of employment, data privacy and transitional services.

“In some international deals, you find yourself dealing with 50 sets of laws and still trying to close by a certain date,” she said. She played a key role navigating Intel’s legal and human resources team throughout the development of the deal.

In another mega-deal, Corman counseled Rockwell Collins Inc. in its $30 billion acquisition by United Technologies Corp. She again led a team of employment specialists across several countries, coordinated review of Rockwell’s obligations under scores of collective bargaining agreements and the laws of numerous countries and drafted provisions of the purchase agreement.

Corman said that in law school she set out to be a criminal defense lawyer. “I did some prison legal assistance as a law student. I found I liked the human angle of the job, and I learned that most people are employees who don’t have run-ins with the criminal justice system. Employment law involves constantly evolving developments across so many areas — the range is almost endless, and that keeps my job interesting.”

— John Roemer