AT WORK

Drawing on more than 25 years of legal experience, James D. O’Connell focuses his practice on employee benefits. Jim provides clients with effective guidance in a broad range of matters, including designing and implementing qualified retirement plans, and health and welfare plans.

As general counsel to a number of private pension and welfare funds, Jim has provided extensive, ongoing services regarding the operation of these plans, including ERISA litigation and counseling, and Taft-Hartley and tax law compliance advice. He has guided clients through Internal Revenue Service self-correction processes, Department of Labor audits and actuarial valuation adjustments. Other services include monitoring due diligence, resolving troubled investments and managing potential conflict issues.

An experienced litigator, Jim regularly represents his clients in court and in administrative proceedings regarding ERISA and employee benefits matters. At trial, he has successfully defended clients and trustees in breach of fiduciary duty class actions and has obtained dismissal of other class actions against funds and trustees.

Jim also provides guidance with respect to health care matters, with particular focus on HIPAA compliance and medical information privacy issues.

IN THE PROFESSION

In addition to his extensive private legal practice, Jim has significant experience with federal law enforcement. During the 1980s, he served for nearly six years as Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from law school, Jim served a clerkship for the Honorable Judge William M. Hoeveler in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

While in law school, Jim was named a Shearman Scholar. Previously, he received a Rotary International Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at Oxford University in Oxford, England, and earned a National Merit Scholarship to attend Harvard College as an undergraduate.

Jim is a frequent contributor to industry and legal journals, handbooks and publications, including the recent HIPAA Portability, Privacy & Security, published by the Employee Benefits Institute of America. He is a regular presenter at conferences and seminars around the country, speaking on subjects as diverse as HIPAA compliance, jointly administered employee health and welfare plans, ERISA compliance and withdrawal liability.

Jim is a member of the American Bar Association, where he is active in the Labor and Employment Section as Neutral Co-Chair of the Subcommittee on Withdrawal Liability and as a member of the Employee Benefits Committee. Jim is a speaker for the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. He is also a member of the Chicago Bar Association, and serves on its Employee Benefits Committee and IRS Subcommittee.

BACKGROUND

Columbia University Law School
J.D., 1979

Oxford University
Graduate Studies, 1975-1976

Harvard College
B.A., magna cum laude, East Asian Studies, 1975

Jim is admitted to practice in Illinois.

RELATED ALERTS

Multiemployer Pension Plan Liabilities: Issues Facing Plans and Employers in 2008
Pension Plan Update: Employers Benefit from Recent Changes to
Withdrawal Liability Statute