Partner, Balch & Bingham LLP
General Counsel to the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, Pepper Crutcher advises and advocates for a wide range of Southeast U.S., private sector employers. Pepper regularly defends employment litigation, including class and collective actions, and both defends and prosecutes unfair competition claims. Pepper’s labor law practice involves all types of NLRB proceedings, labor contract negotiation and arbitration. Pepper also helps employers, insurers, brokers, administrators and providers achieve Affordable Care Act compliance and appeal ACA tax assessments.
Mr. Crutcher has been rated "AV" by Martindale Hubbell and since 2004 has been selected to be included in Chambers USA America's Leading Lawyers for Business: The Client's Guide (Employment, Mississippi). He is also listed in The Best Lawyers in America for Intellectual Property Law and Labor & Employment Law.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
Tammy McCutchen is a leading authority on federal and state wage-hour laws and prevailing wage laws. She counsels businesses on wage-hour compliance, including conducting internal audits on independent contractor status, overtime exemptions, and other pay practices. She also represents employers during investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as an expert witness in wage-hour class actions. She was a founding officer of ComplianceHR, a law and technology company, where she created AI-based applications to evaluate independent contractor and overtime exempt status.
Ms. McCutchen served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2001. She was the primary architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the first major changes to the regulations in 55 years.
Before joining DOL, she was senior counsel for the Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Ms. McCutchen has been a volunteer leader of the Federalist Society since 1989. She served in leadership roles for the Northwestern Student Chapter and Chicago Lawyers Chapter. She currently serves in leadership for the Labor & Employment Practice Group, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Knoxville, TN Lawyers Chapter. She served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law360, the Labor Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Legal Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business, and a Policy Fellow at the ACU Foundation.
Ms. McCutchen is a graduate of Western Illinois University and Northwestern University School of Law. She clerked for the Hon. Daniel Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Shareholder, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart
Chris Murray is Co-Chair of the firm’s Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group. In this role, he assists attorneys throughout the firm and clients nationwide to create, roll out, and enforce effective employment arbitration agreements and other ADR programs. Mr. Murray has extensive experience with class/collective action waivers in employment arbitration. Mr. Murray was part of the Ogletree team that successfully defended the use of such waivers in the Fifth Circuit’s landmark decision in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. N.L.R.B. Since then, he has successfully defended the enforceability of class action waivers in numerous subsequent cases and submitted an amicus brief on the subject on behalf of several major employers’ associations in the Supreme Court’s Murphy Oil case. Mr. Murray assists clients and the Firm’s attorneys to draft or revise arbitration programs focused on a client’s specific needs and goals and in light of changing law and evolving best practices.
Attorney, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Eric Heigis is an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s litigation arm, the Center for the American Future. He litigates cases involving administrative law, individual rights, and structural limits on government power. Prior to joining the Foundation, he served in various roles on Capitol Hill, including as an intern for Senator Ted Cruz, Legislative Assistant for Representative Dave Brat, Legislative Director for Representative Mark Meadows, and General Counsel for Senator Ted Budd. In his eight years working for Congress he covered nearly every policy area and drafted dozens of legislative proposals—several of which became law.
Eric received his B.A. from American University and J.D., magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He was selected as a Bradley Scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and served as Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. He is licensed to practice law in California and Virginia. He is admitted to practice before all federal district courts in Texas and the Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits.
Eric is a pilot and certificated flight instructor, and in his free time he enjoys finding new fly-in destinations to visit with his wife. He also volunteers with the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Young Eagles program and is a Captain in the Civil Air Patrol.
Assistant Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Nathaniel M. Fouch is an Assistant Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. He previously clerked at every level of the state judiciary, including for Justice Pat DeWine of the Ohio Supreme Court. Professor Fouch was the founding president of both the Dayton Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and the Dayton Catholic Lawyers Guild. He earned his B.A. from Berea College and his J.D. cum laude from the University of St. Thomas School of Law. His work on the Ohio Constitution and state constitutionalism has been cited by the Ohio Supreme Court. Professor Fouch lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, Theresa, and their three young children.
Associate, Wiley Rein LLP
Joel S. Nolette is an associate at Wiley Rein LLP, where he advocates on behalf of corporate and individual clients in a broad spectrum of complex litigation matters. In 2017, Joel graduated cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as the Editor in Chief of Volume 15 of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. From 2019 to 2021, Joel clerked for the Honorable Raymond W. Gruender of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; and from 2021 to 2022, he clerked for the Honorable Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Before attending law school, Joel graduated summa cum laude from Gordon College in Wenham, MA, with his Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies and worked as a letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service.
Partner, Duane Morris LLP; Managing Principal, Duane Morris Institute
Jonathan A. Segal is a partner at Duane Morris LLP in the Employment, Labor, Benefits and Immigration Practice Group. He is also the managing principal of the Duane Morris Institute. The Duane Morris Institute provides training for human resource professionals, in-house counsel, benefits administrators and managers at Duane Morris, at client sites and by way of webinar on myriad employment, labor, benefits and immigration matters.
Previously a litigator, Jonathan’s practice now focuses almost entirely on helping employers meet their business objectives or missions by minimizing legal risk, maximizing compliance and focusing on relationship with business objectives or mission and legal requirements or restrictions.
Partner & Deputy General Counsel, Wiley Rein LLP
Rick is a trial lawyer and appellate advocate. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rick learned to love nothing so much as going to trial, unless it is crafting briefs and presenting oral argument in an important appeal. Assistants in that office were fortunate to be able to do both.
Rick represents lawyers and other professionals in malpractice claims, defends insurers in coverage and “bad faith” litigation, and represents clients in commercial litigation. He also represents lawyers in disciplinary proceedings, provides legal ethics advice to law firms, has served as an expert witness on legal ethics and insurance coverage, and is Deputy General Counsel at Wiley.
Rick recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Lawyers Professional Liability and now serves as a Special Advisor to the Committee. During his tenure as Chair of the Standing Committee, Rick also served as a member of the Coordinating Council of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility. Previously, Rick served a three-year term as a member of the Standing Committee. He speaks regularly on professional liability and insurance coverage topics.
Rick has acted as lead counsel for trials in the District of Columbia, Florida, Maryland, New York, Texas, and Virginia, as well as for arbitration hearings. On the appellate side, Rick has presented oral argument in the Supreme Court of the United States; 10 of the federal courts of appeals; the Supreme Courts of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, and Ohio; and state intermediate appellate courts in California, Florida, Maryland, New York, and Texas. His strong record of success includes winning his case in the United States Supreme Court and all five state Supreme Court cases.
Beginning with the Marc Rich cases while he was an AUSA (for those who can remember that far back), Rick has handled many high-profile representations, including dealing with the press as appropriate. Those matters include conducting an internal investigation for a U.S. Senator and representing the Senator in connection with a grand jury investigation, representing high-level White House officials in connection with criminal and congressional investigations arising from the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations, and representing Prof. Alan Dershowitz in connection with a defamation case in Florida.
Rick is an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he is the co-director of the Supreme Court Program, which operates as a clinic in which students assist in preparing submissions to the United States Supreme Court. From 2003 to 2017, Rick was an Adjunct Instructor in Trial Advocacy at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Deputy Director, Regulatory Studies Center, George Washington University
Will Yeatman is deputy director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center. A lawyer, he has spent almost two decades working on federal regulatory policy, with an emphasis on administrative law.
Yeatman has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures, and his scholarly work has appeared in such academic journals as Georgetown Law Journal, Administrative Law Review, and the (forthcoming) Catholic University Law Review. His popular writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg.
Yeatman came to the RSC from the Pacific Legal Foundation. Previously, he had been at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. From 2004 to 2006, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Yeatman holds a BA in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia, an MA in international studies from the Denver University Graduate School of International Studies, and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He is a member of the Washington, DC Bar.
Chief Civil Counsel, Senate Judiciary Committee
Austin Rogers serves as Chief Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, covering the civil portfolio for the Chairman. He obtained dual graduate degrees in Law and Theology from Duke University (summa cum laude), where he served on the Duke Law Journal and Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. After law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Steven D. Merryday in the Middle District of Florida. Following his clerkship, he practiced law at White & Case, specializing in commercial and appellate litigation. Prior to serving as Chief Civil Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as Senior Counsel of Oversight and Investigations for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Austin obtained undergraduate degrees (summa cum laude) in International Business and Theology from Southeastern University and Wheaton College, respectively, and played college soccer at both schools.
He has published First Amendment scholarship in the Duke Law Journal and the Marquette Law Review, and he has a forthcoming article that will be published in the Florida Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the Republican National Lawyers Association, and the Federalist Society, where he serves in a volunteer capacity. Austin is actively involved in his church and serves on its worship team.
Partner, Ellinger and Associates, LLC
Marc Ellinger is a founding partner of Ellinger and Associates, LLC, and represents businesses, individuals, organizations and committees in disputes. Marc focuses his practice in election law, legislative and rulemaking practice, municipal finance and structuring, issues of state and federal constitutional law, gaming law, and appellate practice and has achieved a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent rating.
Marc served as legal counsel for the Missouri State Auditor in 1993. In that role advised the State Auditor constitutional and tax law matters, as well as matters related to municipal and state debt financing and regularly appeared before the state appellate courts and the Missouri Supreme Court on the Auditor’s behalf. Marc transitioned to private practice in 1999. Prior to founding Ellinger and Associates, LLC, Marc was a member of Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch, LC.
Marc has more than twenty years of experience in election law and campaign finance compliance, including the representation of candidates, as well as ballot measure campaigns and Political Action Committees across the State of Missouri. Marc has drafted initiative petitions covering a broad range of subjects and has been involved in the coordination of campaigns and litigation on ballot measures, on behalf of both proponents and opponents.
Marc is also actively involved in representing businesses and individuals in gaming law, particularly with respect to the Missouri Gaming Commission license and compliance matters. He represents casino operators, gaming equipment suppliers, game developers and key persons throughout the gaming industry on a broad range of gaming and licensing matters. He is one of only two Missouri attorneys recognized as a General Member of the International Masters of Gaming Law and is recognized as a Super Lawyer in the Gaming Law area.
Marc’s background as a CPA allows him to view tax matters through multiple lenses. Marc has represented numerous clients in administrative and civil cases involving sales, use and property tax law. He also regularly advises clients regarding transaction structuring.
Marc has significant appellate experience in Missouri. He has argued more than twenty cases in the Missouri Supreme Court and dozens more in the Eastern and Western Districts of the Missouri Court of Appeals. From local government issues of first impression, to tax matters, to numerous election law cases, Marc has protected the interests of businesses, individuals and local governments across Missouri.
Associate, Covington & Burling LLP
Eli Nachmany is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in the Washington, DC, office. He clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Eli graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Prior to law school, Eli served as the speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and as a domestic policy aide in the White House Office of American Innovation. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a B.S. in Sports Management. Eli’s scholarship on administrative law and executive power has appeared in the BYU Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Yale Law Journal Forum.
Office Managing Partner, Husch Blackwell LLP
Lowell has more than 30 years of experience navigating the intersection of business and government at both the state and federal levels.
A wide range of clients – including regulated businesses in manufacturing, aviation and healthcare; individual political candidates and political action committees (PACs); and political subdivisions – rely on Lowell’s extensive experience in administrative law; election law and political campaign finance law; as well as government contract and procurement matters. A trusted litigator, he has handled numerous cases in the federal and state courts challenging government action, and has made multiple appearances before the Missouri Supreme Court in employment and constitutional cases.
Clients appreciate Lowell’s deep background within and innate understanding of public policy. Lowell worked in Washington, DC, as a policy advisor to the Judicial Conference of the United States and as counsel to Bob Dole’s 1988 presidential election campaign. He also served as both Missouri’s Deputy Director of Revenue and general counsel to Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. Lowell has been a regular speaker on administrative law, tax and election law issues to groups such as the Associated Industries of Missouri (AIM), the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Missouri. His proven collaborative and relationship-building skills move client goals forward.
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