Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
A blog by the attorneys at the law firm of Ford & Harrison about the popular television series “The Office.” Each article takes a look at a different episode, and summarizes the employment law lessons for the week.
For the second year in a row, we’ve been selected as one of the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100, a list of the 100 best blogs for lawyers as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association. They’re running a contest to determine which blawgs are the most […]
Cost of drinks: $500 Litigation Value: $100,000 – $1,000,000 (depends on how seriously someone gets hurt and who it is) Watching the Drunken Debauchery: Priceless, but probably not worth the risk. The problem that caught my attention during the “Business” Trip episode of The Office was the company-sponsored drinking event that led to Andy and […]
Litigation Value: $50,000. In this week’s episode of The Office, Michael Scott is on camera calling Kelly Kapoor dusky and exotic, and then Dwight Schrute, the assistant to the regional manager, refers to her southern India birth before he threatens her. A jury somewhere will find against Dunder Mifflin for race discrimination. Of course, that […]
Cost of Trips: $800 Potential Exposure for Out-of-Office Accidents: $25,000 per employee Litigation value for Dunder Mifflin’s missteps: $0. This has to be some kind of record. For the fourth week in a row on The Office, we have a new episode in which no one at Dunder Mifflin did anything to put the company […]
Litigation Value: $0. Shockingly, I don’t think Dunder Mifflin can be held liable for any conduct in the “Crime Aid” episode of The Office. That doesn’t mean I think it’s advisable for Michael Scott and Holly to be messing around at work, for Phyllis to auction off sexual favors (“hugs”), or for Dwight to point […]
Litigation Value: Currently, $0 My stomach still hurts from laughing. This week on The Office, Michael Scott prepared for the birth of his make-believe baby by having Dwight Schrute, pant-less and on Michael’s desk, give birth to a buttered-up watermelon, all the while screaming about secretly marking the baby so no one could steal it. […]
Litigation Value: Surprisingly, maybe $0 Maybe this is just a reflection on me and my days as an HR Director, but I didn’t see much that would really nail Dunder Mifflin this week. Sure, Meredith has been having an affair with a vendor to get discounts for the company. But it didn’t come out that […]
The second week of the new TV season and no new episode. Seriously. Not cool. Since I already wrote about Sarah Palin a few weeks ago, I’m just going to use something I didn’t cover in last week’s episode. There was a funny part where Oscar played a joke on Holly about being offended with […]
Litigation value: ($500,000 when all is said and done, mainly to Phyllis and Kelly) Wow, it certainly didn’t take the folks at Dunder Mifflin long to get into midseason form! And from a liability perspective, that’s not good. When corporate initiated a weight-loss competition among all the branches, the Scranton branch sprang into action. While […]
The new season of The Office starts Thursday. The first episode is entitled “Weight Loss,” and the promo features Michael in some sort of fat suit. I can already see we’re going to have some issues. On the bright side, Michael and the new HR gal Holly are apparently going to continue developing their friendly […]