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Pro
Discuss the facts of your situation with an employment lawyer, please. The fact that there was no discrimination does not prevent former employees from threatening to sue for discrimination and from using these threats to extract a bigger severance package. Whether this is a viable strategy will, of course, depend on the facts.
And obviously refrain from discussing this in non-privileged communications.
“Behavior” and “conduct” are signals to me that you said or did something that violated their policies or standards for behavior. Did HR meet with you and ask questions about an event, comment or interaction? If yes, that’s likely what this is about. The package is a separation (not severance for a lay-off). This is not about profits and it’s very unlikely cover for lay-offs. I ask the following from a place of compassion and pulling for you: is it possible you are having a difficult time with the idea you may have made a mistake, stuck in denial / defensiveness mode and not able to really hear what has gone wrong? I get it, I’ve been there. The challenge is, until you can really hear the situation, you will use your very precious time and energy chasing ghosts.
That said, I think it’s a good idea to engage an employment attorney. You may not have any recourse but that attorney can help negotiate the terms of the separation and get more information on what happened. While you are looking for an employment attorney, you can ask for a copy of your personnel file. Ultimately, this experience may require you to face some hard truths, including something about your behavior and conduct and that employers have a broad range of rights (employees, sometimes not so much). I wish you the very best.
Pro
Unless there’s discrimination, don’t really see what you can do.
The fact that they’re offering severance typically means you aren’t really being fired for “behavior/conduct”. Just sounds like a run of the mill layoff.
Pro
There’s not much upside to a firm for firing a high biller with good performance. It costs more to train new people than to have you keep churning more work out. There’s more to the story here. You did something to upset someone.
What’d you say OP?
Pro
Please speak to an employment lawyer for legal advice on your specific situation. The rest of us are just speculating based on the very limited information provided.
Tell us what the behavior and conduct thing is about.
They could NOT give me concrete examples of my behavior and conduct other than its behavior and conduct based.
I believe in most states you are entitled to a copy of your personnel file. So you might be able to get some information from there.
But as others have said the only illegal reasons for termination of an at-will employee are discrimination or retaliation for valid working condition complaints.
If you had a contract then look to your contract for remedies for early termination.
You must talk to an employment lawyer.
“so that the firm could take profits” meaning avoid paying a year-end bonus?
Also curious about what was meant by this. What profits are they reaping? Is the department light and they would rather have fewer associates working more hours? Or is this just fluff?
It’s not illegal to fire someone and the reasons they gave you aren’t protected reasons that would make your termination illegal. What are you wondering about your rights specifically?
This is true.
In the same boat, except I just came back from FMLA (?). Does anyone have an employment lawyer they can recommend? I’m in NYC.
So you said something in passing that you agree was inappropriate and it upset someone who went to HR and now the company is firing you for cause and offering you a small severance as a courtesy and so that they can get a release. Do you believe you are being discriminated against or treated differently than your peers based on a protected characteristic? It doesn’t seem like that from your post or comments. It seems like you’re upset because you think (apart from this one slip up) you're a good employee who bills a lot. But as an at will employee you can be fired for any reason or no reason (without severance) as long as you’re not being discriminated or retaliated against.
We recently let someone go who insisted that we never told him why he was being let go. In reality, we repeatedly told him why, he just refused to hear it. No one trusted him and he was greedy af. Everyone believed he was willing to throw us or clients under the bus for a few extra dollars today without regard to long term repercussions. We made that very clear to him and gave him specific examples before and after we fired him. He would just deny it. Like, literally we would tell him the reasons and he would say "that's not true" and still claims we never told him why.
I am telling you this with the advice to do some serious self reflection. If you were a top performer and top biller, they would never fire you unless there were serious concerns. Having been on the other side, there is no "taking profits" in this situation. That wouldn't make any sense at all. Profitable and good associates are way harder to find than you would expect.
You
You can totally sue,there plenty of different branches of violations, contact multiple law firms who specialize in employment law.