NOTE FROM ROBIN: This post is by Ellen Kearns, head of our Boston Office and co-chair of our Wage and Hour Practice Group.

You have probably heard by now that Patricia Smith, Solicitor of Labor, announced at the annual labor and employment conference of the American Bar Association that a final rule on the white-collar exemptions to the overtime regulations will not be issued until late ...

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Labor began enforcement of its Home-Care Rule, which prohibits third-party employers from taking advantage of the overtime exemption for some domestic workers. The rule also narrows the definition of exempt "companionship services" under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Ellen Kearns, co-chair of our firm's Wage and Hour Practice Group, and I ...

"An apple a day keeps the doctor lawyer away." Here are five easy and inexpensive things that employers can do to minimize their risk of being sued and maximize their chances of victory if they do get sued. None of these involve major expense, or even the use of lawyers.

1. Err on the side of treating your workers as (a) non-exempt and (b) "employees." Let this be your default ...

For a guy who doesn't tweet, Jim Coleman - head of Constangy's Metro Washington D.C. Office and co-chair of our Wage and Hour Practice Group - has suddenly become an awfully big Twitter celeb.

(Or anyway, as big a Twitter celeb as employment lawyers ever become.)

It all started last weekend, when I got a tweet from Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady:

As I told Suzanne, I really wasn't sure, so ...

Uh-oh. Lawyers who do document review may not be exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a court decision issued yesterday.

Large law firms and legal services vendors often hire stables of contract lawyers to do document review in big cases. Sometimes, the lawyers who do the review are actually reading and analyzing the documents in light of ...

Are you still using "independent contractors"? Get out of here - you know they're really employees!

On Wednesday, I did a very short "breaking news" post on the new Interpretation issued by Wage and Hour Administrator David Weil on when workers are "employees" versus "independent contractors" under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Here's more.

As employers probably ...

Law360 reported this morning that the U.S. Department of Labor issued a memorandum addressing the "independent contractor versus employee" issue, taking the position that most workers are actually employees within the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

We'll have more on this after we've had an opportunity to review it in more depth. Meanwhile, here is the Memorandum

Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez announced today that the U.S. Department of Labor has submitted a proposed rule on the white-collar FLSA overtime exemptions to the federal Office of Management and Budget, which means that the proposed revisions to the overtime regulations could be made public before long.

Although the specifics are not known at this time, the proposed rule is ...

(St. Patrick's Day is sooooo nine hours ago!)

Ever looking to the future, we celebrate the coming April Fools' Day with this month's greatest employment law blog posts. Some of my summaries are accurate, and others are "fools' editions" - you'll have to read the actual posts to know which is which. There are so many excellent posts that I'm listing them in alphabetical order by ...

By David Phippen of our Metro D.C. Office.

While the year is still young, here are 15 New Year's resolutions that employers may want to make: