General Counsel Law provides training and seminars for employers, employees, educators, boards of directors, and others on the full range of employment laws and current legal issues. As a Boston discrimination lawyer, Kevin M. Plante, Esq., provides clients with training on diverse areas including risk management, legal compliance, and best practices.
Training offered by General Counsel Law includes workplace discrimination for administrators and staff, compliance with acceptable use of technology policies, preventing sexual harassment on boarding school and college campuses, personnel records maintenance, and data breach notification laws. Given the diverse and complex needs of independent schools, every training is crafted to meet the specific needs of your organization.
How Trainings Are Developed
No two organizations carry the same risks, and a training built from a generic slide deck teaches generic lessons. General Counsel Law builds each session around the client’s own materials. Mr. Plante reviews the handbook, policies, reporting procedures, and job descriptions that are currently in effect, then designs a session that walks participants through the rules as they apply to them. Where the review surfaces a gap between what a policy says and what the organization practices, the client hears about it before the training rather than during a deposition.
Sessions are scheduled to fit the client’s calendar, including faculty orientation, in-service days, new employee onboarding, management retreats, and regular board meetings. Trainings can be delivered on-site or remotely, to an entire staff or to a single leadership team, and can be paired with a written summary that participants keep for reference. Attendance records and materials are prepared with an eye toward the evidentiary value they may later carry.
Discrimination and Harassment Prevention
Massachusetts requires employers with six or more employees to maintain a written policy against sexual harassment and to distribute it to employees at hire and annually thereafter. The statute encourages education and training, and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has long treated meaningful training as a mark of a good faith employer.
General Counsel Law provides harassment and discrimination prevention training for staff and separate, more in-depth sessions for supervisors, administrators, and department heads. Supervisor sessions are designed to help you understand when you need to take action, how to give the organization proper notice, how to handle complaints without letting your feelings cloud your judgment, the steps involved in filing an internal complaint, and the potential for retaliation, which can be more expensive than the original issue. These sessions also review protections under state and federal law, including disability and religious accommodations, and how your organization’s own standards compare to the legal requirements.
Mandated Reporting and Student Protection
For schools, camps, youth-serving programs and human services organizations, few obligations carry higher stakes than mandated reporting. Training will help you understand who needs to report, what level of concern makes them have to, when and how to file, how far they can go within their own company before reporting, and the responsibility that comes with being the reporter, not the company.
We’ll also cover how to set healthy boundaries between adults and students, how to supervise overnight and off-campus programs, and how to deal with allegations involving employees, volunteers, and alums. Mr. Plante draws on his experience as General Counsel at a private school to advise on practical questions that arise in the moment, when an answer is needed within the hour.
Hiring, Interviewing and Pay Transparency
We train hiring managers and search committees on everything from what questions are okay to ask during interviews to how to keep track of hiring decisions and use background checks and references responsibly. We’ll also go over the CORI rules and how to set and explain a pay range honestly.
Discipline, Documentation and Termination
Most employment disputes are won or lost in the personnel file long before a lawyer is involved. General Counsel Law provides supervisors with training on creating clear, up-to-date, and uniform performance records. We also cover how to handle disciplinary discussions, the progressive discipline process, and its exceptions. We will also review the types of decisions that frequently lead to claims, like terminations that occur shortly after a complaint, a leave request, or an accommodation request. We’ll also go over how to manage separation and release agreements, as well as the best practices for what to include and exclude in a reference.
Wage and Hour Compliance
Such claims are unforgiving in Massachusetts, and good intentions do not cure a misclassification. Training covers everything from figuring out if someone is exempt or not, to how to test if someone is an independent contractor, and even how to handle meal breaks, time on call, and travel. We also cover how to calculate overtime, make sure wages are paid on time when someone leaves, and what records you need to keep to defend yourself.
Data Security, Personnel Records and Technology
General Counsel Law trains staff on safeguarding personnel and student records, recognizing and reporting suspected breaches, responding to employee requests for personnel records, and complying with acceptable-use technology and social-media policies. Sessions can be tailored for administrative staff, IT personnel, or the full employee population.
Board and Trustee Training
This training is designed to help you understand your responsibilities, including how to act with care, loyalty, and respect. It also covers the conflict of interest policy and how to handle annual disclosures. You’ll learn how to use executive sessions correctly, review and approve executive compensation, and keep documents safe and confidential. Plus, you’ll get a clear picture of the board’s role when an investigation or regulatory inquiry is happening.
Investigations Training
For administrators, HR, Title I, X, and compliance experts, General Counsel Law provides training on handling internal investigations. This includes figuring out what to look into, planning and organizing interviews, keeping evidence safe, determining who’s telling the truth, handling privilege and maintaining confidentiality, and writing findings that will hold up under scrutiny. See Government & Internal Investigations.
Schedule a Training
To discuss a training program for your organization, board, or leadership team, contact General Counsel Law LLC today.