What Is an Employment Law Newsletter?
Generally speaking, an employment law newsletter is a publication that is sent on a periodical basis (e.g., monthly, quarterly) to its subscribers. Employment law newsletters serve one or more of four purposes:
- To establish the newsletter publisher as an authority on employment law. (E.g., the publisher can establish its authority by providing a great deal of high-quality, free , and useful content in its newsletter.
- To provide space for employment law advertisers.
- To provide actionable employment law advice to subscribers.
- To provide valuable insight from the subscribers’ perspective on what employment law issues are or will be facing them.
Not all employment law newsletters serve all four of the purposes set out above. For example, many employment law newsletters provide television stations with a way to deliver employment law advice to their audience without appearing to offer it as legal advice. Some may focus on low-cost or free continuing legal education.
Benefits of Signing Up
- Lower risk of compliance violations. Staying current will reduce the chances that your organization commits labor law violations and gets in trouble with the government.
- Expert opinions. Gain insight from attorneys specializing in employment law. Their opinion on how a new legal development will affect your organization will help you understand its ramifications.
- Understanding how changes impact your organization’s specific industry. Attorneys who publish newsletters often understand how legal developments affect specific industries.
- Comply with all laws. Not all employers are covered by all employment laws. Attorneys publishing newsletters will help you determine what laws your organization needs to comply with, and which it does not.
- Find the right expert. Attorney-authors explain the kinds of situations for which they can provide most value to clients. That’ll help you find and vet an attorney, and determine what your case is worth.
Relevant Topics to Expect
Most employment law newsletters cover a few common topics. The first is new legislation. Sometimes this is federal legislation, sometimes state, and sometimes city ordinances. Your attorney may write about such legislation every month, spot new trends, or do quarterly/yearly updates. If a new law goes into an effect that has a huge impact on your industry, your attorney may do a special newsletter of just that topic.
Another common topic is court rulings. Again, please don’t think of "court rulings" as a long list of court cases. Most employment law newsletter articles are really designed to offer advice, so the newsletter articles will be specific with clear and easy to understand descriptions of court rulings. If a court case like Dolan v. Continental Airlines addressed an issue that many businesses deal with, like properly paying employees, even if the case wasn’t high profile or in the news, you’ll find out about it through your employment law newsletter.
New trends in Human Resources and staffing also tend to be a regular feature of legal newsletters. Whether it is about workplace bullying, or new uses of technology, or even social media issues, look for articles that can help you or your HR staff keep up with the latest in the field.
Finally, "hot topics" can be a regular feature. Sometimes these are stealthy changes that employers need to know about, whether they are legislative, judicial, or just trends that employers can use to help them avoid trouble. And yes, sometimes your lawyer might even give their opinion on a matter in a new article.
In addition to these set topics, employment law newsletters will also have breaking news about any serious issues that wide swathes of employers might be facing, and any news that is not just about one particular type of business or industry. If a practice gets banned in more than one state, if protestors are marching against a particular company, or even if a trend happens that might make it hard for businesses to get loans or credit, these stories will end up in employment law newsletters.
Did you know that there were Employment Law Employment Law Blogs that have had their "on-air" moments? These blogs were highlighted in media outlets.
Who Should Subscribe to Employment Law Newsletters?
As noted above, our employment law newsletter, The Workplace Report, published in all U.S. and Canadian jurisdictions, is geared toward human resource professionals, business owners, in-house lawyers, business executives, chartered accountants, and attorneys in private practice or government service. Subscribers to our monthly newsletter receive a current review of breaking legal trends, recent case law and proposed bills on issues such as labour standards, human rights, occupational safety, wrongful dismissal, workers’ compensation, employment standards, and pay equity. If a federal or state law affects other jurisdictions, our lawyers alert you if your business is in the affected jurisdiction. And if those same changes in employment legislation occur in Canada, we let you know that too. We have lawyers on both sides of the border; your needs are likely to be served by our litigation and counsel resources.
Many do-it-yourself publications exist, however, we take pride in two compelling differences. First , every one of our lawyers has commitment and talent, acquired through years of experience, to report reliable analysis of important legal news in the context of your business and the jurisdiction in which your business is located. Every story appearing in The Workplace Report is from the pen of an employment lawyer with over 10 years of experience who can draw on their expertise to make sense of the new development for you, our subscriber. Second, our lawyers possess a wide breadth of knowledge across each of the areas of labour and employment law that respondents must comply with and be prepared for. Those skills enhance the quality of our publications that explore the impact of a case and its potential consequences for our subscribers and their employers when faced with a similar situation. Finally, our firm, Roper Greyell, has produced a significant number of articles for leading publications. As a result, you can be assured that we present our analysis in plain English, quickly, accurately and with a sense of urgency to you, our cherished subscribers.
Top Employment Law Newsletters to Follow
Maintaining up-to-date knowledge on employment law trends is extremely important. Subscribers to email newsletters will receive the results of these research efforts directly in their inbox.
Below are some of the more widely disseminated and respected employment law news aggregators:
The State of California issues a newsletter on a variety of labor law topics called the DLSE Digest. The California Labor Commissioner’s office recently brought her E-Newsletter, The DLSE Digest, to life in digital form. The Division of Labor Standards Enforcement publishes a monthly newsletter which is available in PDF form. The DLSE Digest provides information about labor law developments, D.L.S.E. policy and procedure, changes in the law, newly published court decisions, and summaries of information contained in development bulletins issued by the D.L.S.E.
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) sells both a print version and an electronic version of its HR News weekly newsletter. This weekly newsletter is available to non-SHRM members at a cost of $99.00 per year. SHRM members can choose between the electronic version ($59.00) and the print version ($79.00). The SHRM weekly e-mail newsletter delivers breaking and essential HR news directly to your inbox every Friday.
The United States Department of Labor also maintains an employment law blog. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Law Blog brings together information about employment laws and regulations to help employers and employees learn and understand their rights and responsibilities under the Nation’s workforce laws. The Department of Labor provides one-stop shopping with links to information about all of its laws and regulations. The blog does not include OSHA information.
The National Employment Law Institute publishes a weekly newsletter summarizing case law, new guidelines, rule proposals and other information it believes will be important to employers and employees.
How to Select the Right Employment Law Newsletter
When selecting an employment law newsletter, consider the following criteria: Quality: The best way to measure quality is to read it – almost any substantive law item can be understood by a non-lawyer. Quantity: You have to balance the quantity with your ability to read the material. For example, some firms put out a daily eNewsletter; others only monthly or even quarterly. The more frequently you put something out, the more often there will be something for me to read , but the more likely it is that I won’t read all of it. If you only put something out quarterly, however, there’s enough in each issue so that if I miss it in my mailbox that day, I’m going to miss it until I (hopefully) remember to look again, perhaps months later (at least in my case). Industry-specific v. general: you can never go wrong with an industry-specific newsletter. However, those that have general interest (meaning everyone at the firm gets the same thing at the same time, regardless of practice group) also tend to be read with regularity by clients.