Tracey Lewis Discusses Employment Law Specialization at Leeds Law Firm

Thank you so much, Laura.

Sure. Um, so I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I am licensed in New York, New Jersey and Texas, moved to Texas about, I would say 10 years ago now. So I have practised employment law my entire career. Um, I went to law school in DC and did some internships during law school related to employment law, figured out that was the area of law I wanted to practise and just have stuck with it ever since. So today I practise employment law, um, which includes wrongful terminations and overtime claims in Texas, New York, and New Jersey.

Yeah.

Sure. So, um, Leeds law firm is a two attorney firm. I practised with my partner, Jack Leeds. He does employment as well, personal and personal injury, car accidents and slipping balls.
Um, so both of us practice to the employment law department together. He does personal injury on his own. Um, and then we have our staff of course, that supports and helps us with that. So, um, he’s actually licensed also in other states, Texas, Georgia, and Maryland. So his practice encompasses those additional two states.

Yeah, I think, um, for my particular department, employment law, it’s really a specialty for me. So I know a lot of firms that, you know, kind of offer a full service.
They do multiple different areas of law, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But for me, Um, I’ve specialised in employment law. I do continuing legal education only in that specific area. And I really try to learn and stay abreast on what’s going on with employment, discrimination, new developments in the law, so that I feel like with that specialty and really narrowing down that one area of law, I can offer my clients the best advocacy in that area is possible. Most of my clients, when they come to me, you know, they’re in a precarious situation, they’ve just been terminated from their job or they’re not getting the pay that they’re supposed to get. They’re working overtime hours and not getting paid time and a half.

So it’s a sensitive and emotional situation. And I think they’re really looking for somebody who knows. What to do in those particular scenarios. I think that sets us apart because we really do specialise in that.

Right. Because every situation is different. I mean, I have clients who. You know, they’re going through medical treatment and they lost their job, so that means now they don’t have health insurance. They have surgeries coming up. I mean, you know, people losing their income. They have kids. They don’t know how they’re going to support their family. So it’s a really, you know, it’s a really emotional situation. I think you have to balance that with obviously what the law says we can do and how we can advocate for our clients, but also what the person is going through at that particular time.

That’s really well said. That’s really well said. I know over the years, having dealt with many attorneys, myself, that every firm has growing pains, faces challenges. What would you say your firm’s biggest challenge has been and how did you manage to overcome that?

The lawyers are Very useful, obviously, but we can’t do it without staff that can help us communicate with clients, collect documents, you know, keep a client’s file up to date. So as we’ve grown, we’ve hired more staff that’s helped us be able to manage our time better and make sure that. Nobody’s falling through the cracks. If somebody does come to us close to a deadline, we can still work to get their case done.

So, Jack does a lot of our marketing and he’s probably more knowledgeable than me, but I find personally, I look on YouTube and social media all the time to find information, you know, outside of the legal realm for myself. So one thing we have tried to do is YouTube videos, even if they’re shorts, you know, we try to keep it relatively short, digestible information for people to go on there and get themselves. Um, and then also keeping up with our Instagram and Facebook page to where people can get information, you know, just short, Short snippets of, you know, uh, legal tips, things like that. Um, so that’s something that we’ve kind of worked to get the word out there. And we have had clients call us and say, Hey, I saw your YouTube video.

I’m actually going through a situation that I think might be, for example, disability discrimination, and we’ve been able to retain that client through social media or YouTube videos. So that’s one way that we try to get the word out. And then, um, we do some SEO type marketing as well. I’m not even going to go into that and pretend that I know how that all works. Doc handles that. But, um, we do do that as well with our website and stuff.

Yeah, I think we definitely are looking to grow. Um, one of the major areas that has been growing is within our employment law practice. We do severance negotiations where, um, a lot of companies, when they’re doing these large reductions in force, or even if they’re just terminating one individual employee, they are offering severance agreements, but it’s a, You know, it’s sometimes a 20 page legal document that somebody has never seen before and they need somebody to look it over and also negotiate the terms because there may be a severance payment offer in there, but a lot of times there’s room to negotiate for more money.

So that is one area of our law practice that’s really expanding, um, with severance negotiation. Um, and that’s a service that we offer to clients. And also, um, just growing in our processes, we’re trying to, you know, get better. Like I said, at the case management, time management. So that’s the area that we’re always focusing on improving as well.

Thank you, Laura. Same here. It’s been nice talking to you.