Neal Schelberg, a Partner in the Labor & Employment Law Department and a member of the Employee Benefits, Executive Compensation & ERISA Litigation Group, is recognized nationally as a leading employee benefits lawyer. The U.S. Secretary of Labor recently appointed Neal to serve for a 3 year term (2012–2015) on the Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans (known as the ERISA Advisory Council).
Neal is a prolific author and a highly regarded speaker on employee benefits law topics. He is a co-author of the ERISA Fiduciary Answer Book, a comprehensive text on employee benefits law, and “Same-Sex Marriage – The Evolving Landscape for Employee Benefits,” a seminal law review article on the legal issues under ERISA of same-sex marriage. He has contributed chapters to leading texts on employee benefits, including “Arbitration of Benefit Disputes” (published in Fiduciaries and Their Professional Advisors) and “Legal Considerations of Real Estate Investment for Employee Benefit Plans” (published in Trustees Handbook: A Basic Text on Labor Management Employee Benefit Plans). Neal is a frequent lecturer for many organizations such as the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, the Law Education Institute and the Practising Law Institute. He has also been quoted in numerous journals and periodicals.
Neal has been recognized in US Legal 500 as a leading employee benefits practitioner in Proskauer’s “Tier 1” rated Employee Benefits practice. US Legal 500 cited Neal as being “’one of a kind’, he is the only practitioner in the field I would select to brief a CEO or corporate board.”
As a member of Proskauer's Sports Law Group, Neal serves as benefits counsel to professional sports leagues, advising on employee benefit issues affecting professional athletes and other league and team personnel such as officials, general managers, coaches, scouts and trainers. He has provided benefits counsel to each of the major sports leagues in the U.S. -- the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Football League.
Neal serves as legal counsel to the boards of trustees of over 50 multiemployer and single employer pension and welfare benefit plans. He is recognized as a leading lawyer in the U.S. in the representation of financially troubled multiemployer pension plans. Neal provides legal counsel to various boards of trustees in industries such as wholesale and retail food and newspaper publishing, whose pension plans were terminated in mass withdrawals with unfunded pension benefits liabilities approaching $1billion. He represents the leading newspapers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, advising them on their obligations under the dozens of multiemployer pension plans to which they contribute. He also advises several leading private equity funds with respect to their investments in companies that contribute to, and have withdrawn from, multiemployer pension plans.
Neal has been involved in the full spectrum of Proskauer's employee benefits practice, including drafting plan documents; qualifying plans with the IRS and ensuring their continued compliance with applicable statutes and regulations; and providing legal advice with respect to ERISA's requirements. He has also had extensive experience in the employee benefit aspects of purchases, sales, mergers, leveraged buyouts and other forms of business acquisitions, consolidations and reorganizations, and the formation of limited partnerships. He regularly structures, drafts and negotiates the employee benefit provisions in such transactions. Neal reviews and assesses the potential employee benefit liabilities and provides legal counsel on these and other benefit issues. He also counsels plan sponsors with respect to mergers, spin-offs and asset transfers between employee benefit plans, and provides legal advice to benefit plan clients and their sponsors on a variety of investment transactions, including those in traditional asset classes, as well as alternative investment vehicles such as commingled real estate funds, hedge funds and private equity funds.
Early in his career, Neal served as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. He has taught courses in the Certified Employee Benefits Specialist program at New York University and has lectured on employee benefits law at Fordham University Law School.