Biography

Mr. Cox, a partner in the Chicago office, is a member of the Labor & Employment Department. He maintains a vibrant and full service labor and employment law practice representing clients throughout the United States and beyond. As detailed below, he has significant and successful experience litigating employment discrimination and traditional labor matters, contract disputes, and various other employment-related claims through trial court, appellate proceedings, administrative hearings, mediation, and arbitration.

Employment Litigation Experience.  Mr. Cox has an established track record of versatility in successfully handling matters across the spectrum of labor and employment law, including matters involving esoteric issues in statutes ranging from the Family and Medical Leave Act, to the Fair Labor Standards Act, to the extraterritorial application of Title VII—and even matters only tangentially related to labor and employment law such as resolving numerous Title III ADA public accommodation cases throughout the country and defending a denial of service/public accommodation class action brought under Section 1981. Mr. Cox has also served as lead investigator on multiple high profile matters concerning issues arising under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, some of which implicated sensitive issues of national importance, ensuring that proactive measures and investigation protocol were in place to avoid any legitimate whistleblower complaints under the statute.

Mr. Cox also has extensive experience providing employment and labor counseling services to both large and small public and private companies and not-for-profit organizations (as well as for individuals on a pro bono basis in matters unrelated to labor and employment law), earning the trust of his clients on matters concerning the creation and implementation of human resource policies and procedures, employee recruiting and hiring, performance management and appraisals, appropriate corrective actions for workplace infractions, risk management employee terminations and reductions in force. Mr. Cox is also experienced in conducting training for all levels of management, human resource professionals, supervisors, and employees.

Traditional Labor Experience.  Mr. Cox devotes a significant part of his practice to traditional labor matters. He has achieved successful outcomes in representing private sector clients throughout his career in union election campaigns, grievance arbitrations involving both discharge and contract interpretation issues, unit clarification hearings, and unfair labor practice charge hearings—both on behalf of non-union and union clients. Mr. Cox’s approach to contract negotiations is to reach common ground with unions through collaboration on provisions that maintain and/or further promote workplace flexibility and competitive labor costs; he seeks measures on strengthening union-management relationships with regard to contract administration where the parties demonstrate a shared interest in this regard but otherwise fashions practical (and creative where appropriate) solutions in response to instances of union intransigence or overreaching.

Appellate Practice Experience.  Mr. Cox has also successfully argued before U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal and administrative agency appellate review boards in several precedent setting cases. For example, in Crawford v. Indiana Harbor Belt R. Co., 461 F.3d 844 (7th Cir. 2006), the judge that authored the Seventh Circuit decision lent support to Mr. Cox’s position in that case as to the appropriate paradigm for evaluating the concept of “similarly situated employees,” one of the core elements of any federal discrimination or retaliation claim, appropriately diminishing as “cherry-picking” the overstated concept that anything less than complete uniformity in an employer meting out discipline to employees within the same job classification for similar workplace infractions merits a jury trial in and of itself.

Seyfarth Shaw LLP Experience.  Mr. Cox joined Seyfarth Shaw LLP in January 2003, basing his transition in recognition of both the firm’s preeminence in labor and employment law (as recognized annually by Chambers USA, the leading national publication that evaluates law firm practice groups), as well as the breadth and depth of services it offers its clients in this practice area. Since that time, Mr. Cox has held multiple leadership positions within the firm, most recently helping engineer almost every component of the defined budget/flat fee platform for employment litigation matters (a Six Sigma driven application promoting budget predictability and eliminating “litigation surprises”) and currently serves as the Chicago office coordinator of the Single Plaintiff Litigation Practice Group and manages a team of attorneys for one of the largest labor and employment law hotline counseling services in the United States.

Personal Background and Pledge For Providing Excellent Client Service.  Prior to receiving his license to practice law in 1999, Mr. Cox served the U.S. government in a variety of capacities, including for the Chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the United States Information Services, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Mr. Cox also has significant international experience, including working with the Chairman of Foreign Relations of the Korean National Assembly (the unicameral legislative body of the ROK) on behalf of a USIS sponsored initiative to help alleviate heightened tensions between the DPRK and the ROK (and the U.S.) in the Korean peninsula during a period in the mid-1990s. He also served as a labor analyst for project investments on behalf of the Vietnam Fund Management Company, an equity finance firm then based out of Hong Kong, and in this capacity became one of the first U.S. citizens to visit Vietnam for commercial purposes since the conclusion of the war. Mr. Cox also assisted in promoting several private-state joint ventures involving small factories in Guangdong province at a time when international investment in China was still in its infancy. Mr. Cox has a “survival degree” of fluency in five different languages through his international experiences.

Mr. Cox also earned several distinctions during his collegiate days, ranging from prevailing in a university-wide election to an executive position in student government, to competing on a Division I level in track and field as a pole vaulter, to serving as a speech writer for the longest serving governor in Iowa history, and receiving recognitions ranging from Most Outstanding Greek Man (a fraternity honor) to earning several honors in his academic majors. In addition, at separate times both before and during college, Mr. Cox was a seasonal member—as a condition of employment—of two local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (becoming the fourth generation of his family affiliated at some point in life with the IBT), once when he operated a plastic shredding machine on the night shift for a factory near Chicago and on multiple occasions serving as a “hustler” offloading cargo from rigs and organizing and distributing produce to trucks owned by fruit and vegetable vendors in the early morning hours on the dockyards of South Water Produce Market in Chicago.

Mr. Cox has marshaled these broad experiences into a deep rooted respect and loyalty for effectuating legal services that meet the considerable diversity of client expectations—regardless of client size, geographical presence, or industry—with practical advice and diligent responsiveness on crafting solutions to unique issues confronting their respective workplaces and overall business operations, as well as shaping an aggressive yet cost effective approach in advocating on their behalf on a wide range of labor and employment litigation matters.

Education

J.D., University of Illinois, cum laude, with honors (1999)

B.A., Drake University, cum laude, with honors (1995)

Chinese University in Hong Kong (Study Abroad Program, 1994-1995)

Curriculum specific to Chinese political and business concerns and intensive Mandarin training; Educational institution ranked among Top 50 of World’s Best Colleges and Universities, U.S. News and World Report, 2008.

Admissions

• Illinois

Courts

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• U.S. District Court for the Central and Northern Districts of Illinois
• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin