Shawn Matthew Clark

Shawn Matthew Clark helps employers navigate the workforce issues that arise during pivotal business moments, including restructurings, mergers, executive transitions, and disputes over competition and confidential information. Drawing on extensive litigation experience, he identifies risk early and suggests practical solutions that allow clients to meet their business needs while minimizing their exposure to costly disputes.

Business Restructuring and M&A. Shawn is a trusted advisor on business reorganizations, workforce restructurings, and corporate transactions. On the compliance side, he counsels employers on compliance with federal and state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Acts and the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA), then builds comprehensive reduction-in-force plans that include business justifications, selection criteria, adverse impact analyses, severance plans and agreements, and communications strategies for affected and nonaffected employees. In connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, bankruptcies, and other corporate transactions, Shawn advises buyers, sellers, investors, private equity sponsors, and portfolio companies on employment due diligence and post-transaction workforce integration. He structures executive retention strategies, severance arrangements, stay-bonus programs, and transaction incentives designed to support business objectives during periods of change.

Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets. Companies turn to Shawn to protect their trade secrets and enforce restrictive covenant agreements. He regularly litigates disputes involving noncompetition, nonsolicitation, confidentiality, trade secret misappropriation, tortious interference, and other business torts. He also advises employers confronting employee departures, team lift-outs, competitive hiring initiatives, and other situations involving the protection of customer relationships.

Executive Compensation and Incentive Plans. Shawn counsels employers on incentive compensation arrangements, including annual bonus plans, management incentive programs, retention and stay-bonus arrangements, transaction-related awards, change-in-control incentives, and performance-based compensation structures. He helps employers design programs that support retention, align employee performance with business objectives, and facilitate workforce transitions.

Litigation and Trials. Shawn has extensive experience litigating employment, restrictive covenant, and trade secret disputes. He has successfully obtained and defeated emergency injunctive relief, won dispositive motions, and prevailed at trial and on appeals. His litigation experience informs his counseling practice and helps clients proactively manage legal risk.

Shawn is a core group member of Littler’s Business Restructuring and M&A and Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets practice groups.

Before entering private practice, Shawn served as an assistant corporation counsel in the Labor and Employment Law Division of the New York City Law Department, where he represented the City of New York and its agencies in employment litigation.