Anne Mellen’s practice focuses on the defense of employers in wage and hour class, representative and single actions and legal and regulatory compliance advice, diligence and audit reviews. She has successfully defended a wide range of wage and hour matters, including claims alleging:

• Misclassification
• “Off-the-clock” work
• Failure to provide meal periods and rest breaks
• Improper calculation of overtime compensation
• Joint employment with respect to wage and hour issues

Anne has extensive experience with all stages of wage and hour litigation, including:

• Early and representative discovery
• Conditional certification
• Decertification
• Class certification
• Individual and collective settlements

In addition, Anne regularly provides clients with practical advice and compliance solutions designed to reduce the risk of litigation and government investigations. Anne’s experience includes everything from reviewing employers’ formal policies and practices to ensure compliance with the applicable legal standards to working with employers to develop compliant compensation programs, revise payroll practices and calculation methods and to coordinate messaging and design training to communicate changes to the workforce. Her experience also includes advice on comprehensive state compliance programs spanning the lifecycle of employment with industry and state/city specific template compliance materials that utilize technology such as document automation to create efficiencies that allow smaller businesses to have sophisticated compliance programs previously more exclusive only to larger businesses. She also regularly works with private equity investors and other buyers to conduct diligence reviews of target acquisitions and then oversee the integration of those companies into the buyer’s operations post-closing by updating compliance programs and protocols, designing and implementing training programs, assisting with software adoption and counseling on a variety of other matters.

Anne has developed particular expertise in the healthcare field assisting the home health, home care and hospice industries to comply with wage and hour laws. She also works on litigation and compliance matters for a variety of franchise systems across all industries.