Bert H. Ware

Bert is Senior Counsel at Schwartz Hannum PC and a member of the Firm’s Labor and Employment Practice group. He has a robust employment law background delivering actionable, experience-based and -tested, practical advice and guidance to clients, coupled with extensive litigation and investigations experience. Bert uses his considerable background as in-house and outside counsel to help C-Suite and other senior executives at for-profit and non-profit organizations navigate complicated and sensitive workplace law matters, with an acute sensitivity for legal problem solving, risk avoidance and mitigation, and crisis and reputational risk management.

Bert’s in-house and private practice experience includes the portfolio-based and single matter-defense of single- and multi-party employment-related litigation in federal and state courts, before federal and state fair employment practice agencies, including the EEOC, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and more than a dozen other state and federal agencies, as well as before AAA and FINRA arbitral panels, related conciliations, settlement and resolution negotiations, and mediations.

Bert has substantial practical in-house experience in designing and implementing enterprise-wide or business unit-specific on-boarding, senior executive contract negotiation, design, drafting, and execution, and background screening programs in coordination with sourcing and internal staffing teams, and corporate security organizations for existing business structures, as well as in the context of M&A acquisitions and integrations. Bert’s experience extends to senior executive performance management issues, the design and implementation of employee retention and goal achievement strategies during spin-offs, divestitures, or wind downs, off-boarding, RIFs, separation agreements, proactive protection, support of cyber-forensic review, and recapture of intellectual property, related strategies, negotiations and execution.

Bert works with clients on both neutral third-party impartial and client-directed investigations of alleged misconduct including claims of discrimination, bullying, harassment, hostile work environment, retaliation, threats of violence, and unprofessional workplace conduct issues, as well as policy violations. In addition, Bert has assisted clients in designing, building out, and training teams to put in place internal investigation functions.

Bert assists clients in diversity representation, complex civil rights reviews and employment law audits, as well as dispute resolution, workplace culture assessments examining allegations of race-, gender-, and age-based discrimination and harassment law. He works closely with clients with regard to confidential litigation assessments, internal legal vulnerability assessments, and assists clients in developing “best practice”, benchmarking, and diversity enhancement action plans.

Prior to joining Schwartz Hannum PC, Bert was Of Counsel in the Boston office of Jackson Lewis P.C, a Principal at Bressler Amery & Ross, P.C. in New York City, and served as a Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for 20 years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and its predecessor institutions. He was also a senior associate at Mintz Levin in Boston and an associate at LeBoeuf Lamb in New York, New York.