| Biography:
Introduction
Rory Judd Albert, the former Co-Chair of Proskauer’s 150-lawyer Labor and Employment Department, is the Chair of its 60-lawyer Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Group ("EBEC Group"). Rory recently completed his second three-year term as an elected member of Proskauer’s seven-partner Executive Committee, and he now serves as the Chair of the Firm’s Advisory Committee (which is composed of all of the Firm’s Department Chairs and Office Heads).
Honors
Although Rory has been widely recognized as a driving force within the employee benefits legal community during the past quarter-century, he recently garnered several prestigious accolades in this area, including receiving for the past several years a coveted “Second Tier” ranking from Chambers USA, which has described him as “truly a trailblazer” and as “a bright intellectual who offers practicality to his clients, all of whom benefit from his excellent judgment.” In the 2008 edition of Chambers USA, clients commented to its editors that Rory possesses a “great breadth of knowledge and is adept at handling complex situations where competing viewpoints need reconciling.” The EBEC Group also garnered a “Second Band” ranking by Chambers, which praises the Group as having “deep expertise” in employee benefits and as “a great resource to bounce ideas off, with a great talent base of extremely knowledgeable, responsive and no-nonsense lawyers.”
Rory was elected one of the “Top 40 Employee Benefit Law Attorneys” in the nation in a survey conducted by The National Law Journal; was named by New York Magazine as among the “Top 50” attorneys in New York State; and by HR Executive Magazine as one of the “Top 50” employment attorneys in America. He has also been named several years in a row by Super Lawyer Magazine as a New York “Super Lawyer” and by the Lawdragon 500 Guide as one of the “500 Leading Lawyers” in the nation; is highly-recommended for “Employee Benefits and Pensions” by PLC Which Lawyer?; and is listed in the Guide to the World’s Leading Labour and Employment Lawyers, U.S. Legal 500 and Best Lawyers in America.
Rory also has been elected a fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel and a member of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, as well as a faculty member of the Law Education Institute.
Clientele
The diversity of Rory's clients runs the gamut, including:
- National and multinational companies in a wide variety of industries, such as broadcasting; building and construction; consulting; financial services; health care; media, music and entertainment; retail; securities; telecommunications; television and Broadway theatre;
- Prominent educational, cultural, philanthropic and other not-for-profit organizations; and
- Boards of Trustees of nearly three dozen national, "multiemployer" pension, health and welfare plans (many of which have multi-billion dollar asset bases and cover tens of thousands of participants).
As merely one example of his national reputation, Rory was retained as outside legal counsel to the independent fiduciaries charged with responsibility for completing, on behalf of a six billion dollar national pension plan, one of the largest hotel and convention center projects in the nation – The Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa (in South Florida). This was a very complex legal project – involving an investment of nearly $800 million in pension plan assets – that implicated virtually every aspect of ERISA. Rory led a team of Proskauer lawyers from our Corporate, Employee Benefits, Gaming and Hospitality, Labor and Employment, Litigation, Real Estate and Tax Departments (spanning across three of Proskauer’s offices) in bringing this sophisticated project to a successful conclusion.
Scope of Advice
Rory is a trusted legal advisor who provides practical business advice to his clients on the full panoply of employee benefit law issues, such as:
- The design, implementation and operation of defined benefit, defined contribution, profit-sharing, 401(k), severance, executive compensation, and many other types of retirement and deferred compensation plans;
- All forms of health and welfare plans, including medical, hospitalization, prescription drug, severance and training plans;
- Pension plan funding and withdrawal liability issues, including those triggered by business acquisitions, closings and reductions-in-force;
- Audits, investigations and lawsuits involving plan participants, fiduciaries and regulatory agencies (such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and the U.S. Departments of Labor and Justice); and
- Reforming "troubled" benefit plans that were subject to corrupt and/or other nefarious influences.
Plan Investments and Related Matters
Rory handles the full gamut of employee benefit plan asset and investment issues, including:
- Structuring all forms of investment arrangements, including negotiating and drafting:
- investment management agreements,
- investment guidelines, policies and objectives,
- collective, commingled and other group trust documents,
- documentation for alternative investment vehicles (such as hedge, private equity, and venture capital funds and “fund-of-funds”),
- insurance company annuity and guaranteed investment contracts,
- limited partnership documents,
- securities lending and domestic and global custody arrangements,
- brokerage commission recapture programs, and
- various other plan investment, funding and financing arrangements.
- Negotiating errors and omissions, fidelity bond, and fiduciary liability insurance policies;
- Benefit plan mergers, consolidations and asset transfers; and
- Leveraged buyouts and other forms of business acquisitions and reorganizations, as well as in bankruptcy matters involving a wide variety of employee benefit issues.
Educational Background
Rory obtained his Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School, where he was the Managing Editor of the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems. He graduated (with highest honors) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management. He is a member of the New York State Bar and is admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Outside Publishing and Lecturing
Rory is a prolific author and speaker, having published dozens of articles, and lectured before numerous organizations throughout the country, on various employee benefits law, investment and fiduciary responsibility issues. He has also authored several major legal treatises, including:
- The ERISA Fiduciary Answer Book,
- The Trustees Handbook, and
- Numerous articles for the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans' Employee Benefits Digest.
While an undergraduate student at M.I.T., Rory authored a treatise on police unionism in Boston, Massachusetts, titled: A Time for Reform: A Case Study of the Boston Police Department (M.I.T. Press 1974).
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