New editors from two NY law firms collaborating on newsletter coverage

December 2014

The new editors of New York Employment Law Letter are veteran attorneys Charlie Kaplan, with the New York City office of Sills Cummis & Gross P.C., and Paul Sweeney, with Coughlin & Gerhart, LLP, in Binghamton. The longtime friends will work together to cover employment law developments affecting workplaces across the state.

“In most of the 50 states where we provide employment law letters, we’ve relied on one or a few attorneys at a single firm to keep readers up to date and informed on the latest compliance news,” said Dan Oswald, CEO of Business & Legal Resources (BLR), which publishes the newsletters. “New York is so big, and there is so much going on in both the New York City metropolitan area and the rest of the state that it made sense for us to pair up a strong city firm and a firm with great regional presence upstate. We were lucky to find Charlie, and he immediately identified Paul as the person he needed to complete the team.”

Sills Cummis & Gross, a full-service firm, is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, and has an office in Princeton, New Jersey, in addition to its office in New York City. In addition to its Binghamton headquarters, Coughlin and Gerhart, also a full-service firm, has several branch offices in Central New York and Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Kaplan, a member of his firm’s employment and labor law group, is a new editor but not an unfamiliar face. Over the years, he has presented BLR master classes on defeating union organizing, New York workplace law developments, and other topics in Los Angeles and New York. The Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, and Yale College alum is a member of the American Employment Law Council, the International Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and many other professional groups. He can be reached at ckaplan@sillscummis.com or 212-500-1563. His firm’s Manhattan offices are on Park Avenue. 

Sweeney cochairs his firm’s labor and employment law practice group, which represents public and private-sector employers across New York. Before joining Coughlin & Gerhart in 1992, Sweeney, a Brooklyn Law School and Fordham University grad, served as a Marine Corps lawyer. He recently retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves with more than 29 years of active duty and reserves service, including a combat deployment to Fallujah, Iraq. He serves on the executive committee of the New York State Bar Association’s labor and employment law section and is the treasurer of the Northern District of New York Federal Court Bar Association. He can be reached at psweeney@cglawoffices.com or 607-723-9511. 

“We feel very privileged to be able to put Charlie’s and Paul’s names at the top of this newsletter,” Oswald added. “They are great people and solid professionals and will help New York employers and HR professionals stay in compliance with the many workplace challenges coming their way.”