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David Wechsler

Partner

David Wechsler, the head of the firm’s employment practice, has for 35+ years counselled both senior executives and companies in a multitude of industries, with emphasis in the financial services arena (including investment banking, private equity, asset management and hedge funds). While an accomplished litigator with a string of successes from coast to coast, his relationships with partners at some of the nation’s most prestigious law firms, as well as with many in-house counsel and human resources executives, arbitrators, mediators, and regulators, can often lead to practical resolutions without resort to sustained and expensive combat. 

Mr. Wechsler’s extensive experience litigating and arbitrating compensation, discrimination (including harassment and retaliation), defamation and restrictive covenant cases, and his consequential and deep knowledge of what really goes on in the marketplace, results in scores of professionals and companies hiring him each year to draft and negotiate employment, partnership, operating, separation and settlement agreements, and employment manuals to address the rapidly changing employment landscape. Mr. Wechsler has also defended employees in internal company and FINRA investigations, and on selected occasions conducted such inquires for companies, too.

Since 2007, Mr. Wechsler has been consistently designated as a "New York Super Lawyer," having been chosen for this distinction by both his peers and through independent research conducted by Law & Politics. Mr. Wechsler has also been selected as a Leading Plaintiff Employment & Civil Rights Lawyer by Lawdragon. He has been quoted in leading national publications including The Wall Street Journal, appeared on CNN, and participated as a noted speaker in a variety of industry panels. Mr. Wechsler has also been selected by JAMS to respond to the questions of its employment arbitrators and mediators regarding current employment law issues.

Mr. Wechsler, who hails from Brooklyn, founded Wechsler & Cohen, LLP, more than twenty years ago, and with many of his colleagues joined forces with Harris & St. Laurent as of December 1, 2020.

Mr. Wechsler’s successes include:

• An award of $14.08 million plus denial of a $2 million counterclaim, in favor of three Merrill Lynch financial advisors wrongfully terminated for cause and defamed on their regulatory records (Forms U-5, which were ordered amended), as their trading activities were proven to be known to and endorsed by Merrill Lynch despite the firm’s contrary position with the SEC.   

• An award of $23.3 million (including over $1 million in attorneys’ fees and costs) for a jettisoned Portfolio Manager of a large asset management firm based upon a finding that the firm had no cause to terminate and that the Portfolio Manager had not possessed and/or failed to escalate to compliance potential material non-public information; the firm’s efforts to distance itself from the employee for fear that he might be indicted (which did not happen) did not excuse their conduct and obligation to pay.

• An award of $3.8 million in deferred compensation to a senior equity analyst employed by a multi-billion hedge fund terminated for allegedly not disclosing to compliance that he may have possessed material non-public information; employee asserted that he possessed no such information, his conduct was transparent, and that late year termination was implemented to escape paying him his previously earned wage during a difficult period for the fund.

• An award over $3.3 million for an executive recruiter of day traders, employed by a public company with an electronic trading platform, based on misrepresentations made by the company that damaged the irreparably recruiter’s reputation and career.

• An award of $6.8 million to a financial advisor wrongfully terminated by Wells Fargo/Wachovia Securities, including $1 million in punitive damages and attorneys’ fees, and an expunged regulatory record. 

Mr. Wechsler is admitted to the bar of New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern and Eastern District of New York.