Rory Judd Albert

Rory Judd Albert is the immediate past co-chair of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group. Rory also previously served as a co-chair of Proskauer’s Labor & Employment Law Department as well as on the Firm’s Executive and Advisory Committees. 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
• Boards of Trustees of nearly three dozen national, multiemployer pension, health and welfare plans (many of which have multibillion 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, Lodging & Gaming, Labor & Employment, Litigation, Real Estate and Tax Groups, spanning across three of Proskauer’s offices, in bringing this sophisticated project to a successful conclusion.

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, 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 Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group also garnered a “Second Tier”ranking byChambers, 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 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)

Education :

• Columbia Law School, J.D., 1977
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S., 1974

Admissions & Qualifications : New York

Court Admissions :

• U.S. District Court, New York, Eastern District
• U.S. District Court, New York, Southern District

Memberships :

• American Bar Association
• International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
• Law Education Institute (Faculty Member)
• Fellow, American College of Employee Benefits Counsel