Executive Separation Agreement Negotiation (Pro-executive)

Summary

This practice note offers advice on representing executives in separation agreement negotiation, using bargaining power and leverage that many executives do not even know they have. Many employers believe that terminated executives stand at a significant disadvantage in negotiating separation agreements. For this reason, they often refuse to negotiate at all. They refuse any changes to their standard agreements and impose strict deadlines for execution and return of the separation agreements. The severance offered in exchange for the agreement is usually only enough to make it difficult to turn down. If this were the entire story, executives would never succeed in negotiating better separation agreements and richer severance packages than employers offer. Yet they do.