Donald C. Dowling

Donald C. Dowling has extensive experience advising U.S.-based companies on outbound international labor and employment laws. Outbound international employment law practice focuses on cross-border employment law challenges and projects, including:

• Project-managing multicountry restructurings, reductions in force and workforce mergers and acquisitions
• Drafting regional and global HR policies and codes of conduct
• Crafting multicountry employee benefit plans, equity plans and compensation plans
• Retaining “off-payroll” overseas staff: cross-border Employer of Record, independent contractor, co-employment
• Structuring expatriate assignments, international secondments and overseas transfers
• Investigating allegations of wrongdoing in the cross-border context
• Advising on discipline, disputes and dismissals of border-crossing employees, including choice-of-employment law and forum
• Ensuring data protection law compliance in international HR information systems
• Supporting human rights compliance in international supply chains

Don provides counsel on a wide variety of global employment law matters, including codes of conduct and HR policies that guide operations in multiple jurisdictions, international compensation and benefits issues, whistleblower hotlines, and cross-border internal investigations and HR compliance audits. He regularly advises clients on employment matters that arise with international restructurings, reductions in force, mergers, acquisitions, and outsourcing. Additionally, Don helps clients properly engage independent contractors overseas, manage expatriate programs, and develop employment agreements and employee handbooks.

Earlier in his career, Don served as in-house international employment counsel for a Fortune 500 company in Paris and as an employment law consultant for a global consulting firm. He has delivered hundreds of presentations on international employment law issues in English and Spanish in countries around the world, and regularly teaches courses on a variety of global topics including international and European employment law.

Don has published dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters on the practice of international employment law, cross-border employment law, European Union employment law, and some other topics, published in law journals of Cornell University, Northwestern University, the American Bar Association, and others. He is the author of the first-ever scholarly publications on the practice of outbound international employment, and he published some of the first U.S. scholarly articles on the “social” (employment law) agenda of the European Union.