Labor and Employment Transactional Work

Ellenor provides L&E counsel on a variety of buy- and sell-side transactions ranging from approximately $1 million to $1.1 billion in industries such as software and technology, aviation and automotive transportation and logistics, restaurants and hospitality, energy and natural resources, and healthcare. In this capacity, Ellenor assesses and addresses critical L&E deal points, drafts and negotiates executive employment, release, retention bonus, and individual and investor sale-of-business restrictive covenants agreements, and develops and implements post-closing employee integration strategies.

Ellenor has extensive experience working with private equity firms, providing representation in hundreds of platform and bolt-on acquisitions and strategic investments ranging from approximately $1 million to more than $500 million. Ellenor also has significant experience in transactional real estate work representing real estate funds, investment and asset managers, and REITs in mergers and acquisitions.

Outside of providing L&E transactional assistance to PE firms and in the real estate space, Ellenor has represented a variety of companies in acquisitions of up to $915 million, including numerous acquisitions by General Electric Digital, a division of General Electric (NYSE: GE), McKesson Technologies, Inc., a division of McKesson Corporation (NYSE: MCK), Mailchimp, Carter’s Inc. (NYSE: CRI), and Headlands Research (a multinational clinic trial site organization backed by KKR).

To date, Ellenor has counseled on more than 1,000 transactions to date, allowing her to provide practical and efficient counsel on matters she has encountered repeatedly throughout the course of her career.

Transactional Liability Insurance Work

Ellenor leverages her extensive transactional experience to provide general transactional liability insurance representation to insurance carriers and their agents, including coverage and loss determinations, resulting from post-acquisition representation and warranty insurance claims.

HR Advice and Counseling Work

Ellenor maintains a robust HR counseling practice for her employer clients, providing counsel throughout the employment lifecycle, from onboarding to offboarding, including handling matters such as pre-offer issues, employee classification and compensation, performance and discipline, internal investigations, audits, and terminations and reductions-in-force. Ellenor’s HR work also includes drafting, negotiating, and counseling on a variety of employment-related agreements, including employment, restrictive covenants, commission, retention bonus, and separation and release agreements.

Litigation Work

Ellenor strives to keep her clients out of litigation so they can focus on running their businesses, but when her clients are threatened with lawsuits or sued, Ellenor draws on her experience representing clients throughout the nation in pre-dispute resolution, lawsuits, and administrative proceedings under federal and state anti-discrimination, employment, and contract laws, and her involvement in complex litigation and employee investigations, including investigations by government agencies such as EEOC, SEC, and OSHA.

After graduating from Harvard and before attending law school, Ellenor taught Upper School English and coached the varsity rowing team at The Hockaday School in Texas. In law school, Ellenor served as the Editor in Chief of the Georgia State University Law Review. After law school, Ellenor served a two-year term as a law clerk to the Honorable E. Clayton Scofield III, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of Georgia. Before joining Pierson Ferdinand, Ellenor was a Partner at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP. Before that, Ellenor practiced Labor and Employment law in the Trial and Global Disputes practice at King & Spalding.