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if you're watching this you were probably just fired and you were offered a severance deal but how do you evaluate the fairness of that severance agreement after all you're not a lawyer what would an employment lawyer like me think is a fair amount of money should you negotiate for more how much money could you get my name is Brandon Robertson and I'm gonna answer all of your questions most people think they know what severance is money that you get when you're fired right but the money part is not even half of the equation so what else is there severance is a contract between the fired employee and the company where the employee gives up his or her right to sue the company in exchange for money however even though your severance is a contract you cannot possibly judge the fairness of that deal by just reading what is written on the pages of the contract oh and by the way you're not going to understand a lot of what is on that paper unless you're an employment lawyer so what are your options well it's pretty simple you have four options and we're gonna look at all those on the whiteboard you first can ignore the severance offer that's been made and just move on with your life second you can accept it take the money but not negotiate at all third you can try to negotiate for more money and better terms and conditions and fourth you can file a lawsuit and try to get a lot more money but before we unpack any of these options I need to say something that is really important all right let's get the camera in close for dramatic effect right if something was fishy about your termination or your gut is telling you that some sort of law was broken when you were fired call an employment lawyer like me for a consultation and a severance review why without a law degree and a comprehensive knowledge of how the employment law game is played you're flying blind and sadly I know this from experience I've talked to dozens of very smart individuals who without talking to a lawyer they signed a severance deal worth a few thousand dollars but they had a case worth several hundred thousand dollars please don't be one of these people I don't want to give that news to another person ever most good lawyers like me provide free consultations we do charge for severance reviews but if we end up taking your case we reimburse that money to you ok I'm done with my soapbox let's get back to your four options okay you've been fired and presented with a severance deal what are your responses what are your options option number one is you can just ignore the offer usually this is a bad option because of the main disadvantage you don't get the money but there are advantages and they're important first of all there's no stress involved in this scenario you just move on with your life secondly you get to retain all of your legal rights because you're not signing a contract however if you do have a claim against your employer the clock is ticking on the statute of limitations you can't just wait five years and then decide you want to sue them in my opinion this is only a good option if you're already independently wealthy your termination seemed perfectly legitimate and your stress tolerance is next to zero those three things apply to you then sure option number one is great for you I'm not going to judge you go for it option number two is a little bit better here you simply accept the severance offer that the company made to you without trying to negotiate for more money or better terms now this is where the rubber starts to meet the road a little bit and require some analysis and you'll see it gets pretty complicated but there's two main advantages number one you just sign the agreement and the company gives you the money that they've offered there's very little stress involved in this option but you're going to see that there's a catch you give up your legal right to sue the company for damages and this deserves some more analysis good morning let's get back to work to illustrate this principle I want you to consider the hypothetical Susie and Joe both of them just got fired Susie a $2,000 severance payment was offered to Susie and that might be a great deal Joe whereas a $20,000 severance offer to Joe might be a ripoff why is there a difference after all Joe's getting a lot more money now there are a lot of terms and conditions in that severance contract that you're gonna have to sign one of the main terms is that you give up your right to sue the company for various employment law violations so in order to determine if that 2,000 or $20,000 is fair option number two we need to answer two fundamental questions number one did the company violate your jurisdictions employment lot during your employment or when they fired you and number two what is the economic estimate value of those violations of law once you answer those two questions you can compare that to the amount of money that they've offered you and make an educated decision now under option number two Susie was offered two thousand dollars to sign a severance agreement now is this a good deal well let's look at it she was a bad employee she fell asleep on the job and that's why the company fired her she was only there for six months and she made $15 an hour when the company fired her they didn't break any laws now they've offered her two thousand dollars to sign the severance agreement should she do it absolutely because the company didn't violate any laws there's nothing for her to sue over nothing legitimate anyway so she's basically signing the contract it she gives up nothing and she gets two thousand dollars that's a great deal Joe on the other hand was a great employee but he was fired after he complained about an unsafe work environment the company offered him $20,000 in severance but he had been there for 25 years and was making $95,000 a year he has really good evidence to say that the company fired him in retaliation for his safety complaint here a significant employment law violation has occurred okay so what could he recover in a lawsuit while damages are very difficult to predict in many circumstances hypothetically let's say Joe's lawyer believed he could recover a hundred and fifty thousand dollars with the lawsuit while $20,000 is a lot of money it's a complete ripoff when you compare it to how much he could recover with the lawsuit so he absolutely should not sign that severance deal now have you been paying attention to everything that I've said so far you might think option number three is perfect this is where you negotiate for more money right after they present the severance deal to you and there's several advantages but also some disadvantages and we need to talk about all of them it vanished number one you get more money than they originally offered that's good right if you're successful number two you can negotiate for better terms and conditions that's also good better contract number three you avoid a lawsuit now if you've ever been involved in one that's obviously a good thing lawsuits are very stressful but the negotiation itself for more severance can be temporarily very stressful uh you also risk making a legal mistake at this point if you're negotiating on your own that can be devastating you also if you negotiate poorly you risk the employer pulling the original offer off the table it doesn't happen very often but it does happen so you have to be careful and number seven obviously just like in any of these options if you sign the agreement you end up waiving certain legal rights that you had to a lawsuit but before we move on to option number four we need to talk about something very important with option number three the important part is that you can do this negotiation on your own or you can hire a lawyer now I made an entire video entirely about this option and I highly recommend that you watch it I'll link it at the end of this video so you can just click at the end and go watch that video but I didn't talk about some things in that video that are really important I don't have time to cover everything but I got to talk about these ok if you decide to negotiate on your own under option number 3 frankly there are multitude of risks that you're taking number one negotiation is about leverage and because you don't have the legal training that a lawyer does you might say something that devastates your legal leverage what do I mean by that well unfortunately I've seen this happen multiple times where employees say something in the negotiation and they torpedo their entire case ask any employment lawyer who does what I do and they will have several stories of where this has happened number two if the company is even remotely sophisticated they know that you don't have a lawyer and and when they know you don't have a lawyer they know your legal threats are not serious people say harassment wrongful termination discrimination all the time companies are used to that they're not gonna take it seriously unless you have a lawyer number three this is a big deal extortion risk if you make legal threats incorrectly you risk opening yourself up to getting sued for extortion it happens all the time number four chances are you will go work in the same industry you might even be working for a competitor if your severance negotiation goes poorly and you really upset your former employer you risk increasing the chances of getting sued down the road for trade secret misappropriation breach of confidentiality or things like that number five this is super important if you're not an employment lawyer you're not going to understand the terms and conditions it's very risky to actually sign a contract where you don't know what you're signing that's why I highly recommend that after you are the severance package you contact a lawyer and get a severance review done this isn't that expensive and if the lawyer ends up taking your case they usually waive the fee so it's really important that you get all of your options on the table before you try to negotiate on your there's also usually a deadline to severance packages so you want to contact a lawyer sooner rather than later but hiring a lawyer and getting a lawyer to negotiate on your behalf isn't risk-free either once you lawyer up the company lawyers up and once both sides have lawyers the legitimacy of your legal leverage is what is scrutinized to a much higher degree sometimes that can work against you but the safest option is to first contact a lawyer learn about what your options are and then decide what you should do option number four you can file a lawsuit now it should be obvious if you're paying attention that if you sign a severance agreement you're not able to pursue a lawsuit so before you sign a severance agreement if you think you've got a case call a lawyer for a consultation but the advantages and disadvantages of filing a lawsuit should be fairly obvious number one you have the potential to get a lot more money its inherent and how the legal system works it is what it is number two you do have the opportunity to get a sense of justice or vindication that you just can't get with these other options now on the risky side of things there's a larger risk that you won't get anything there are absolutely no guarantees in litigation and I've seen very good cases end up with a goose egg number four you are going to be stuck for a longer period of time in a stressful situation now your lawyer deals with the majority of the stress but it can take months sometimes years number five with a lawsuit you do have the potential to make significant and meaning change not just at that company but beyond that company now in my opinion you should never file a lawsuit unless you're able to find a good employment lawyer who's willing to take your case most lawyers like me represent employees on a contingency fee that means we don't get paid unless we successfully recover money on your behalf so if you call several good lawyers and they turn down your case I would take that as a very strong hint that you don't have a very good case and I would go and get the best severance option that I could that might be accepting the severance offer that was made that might mean I'm gonna try to negotiate on my own it depends on your situation but I would not pursue a case on my own that is a recipe for disaster at the beginning of this video I said that I was going to tell you what a fair amount of money was for your severance package if you've been paying attention you now know why I couldn't possibly give you an exact number in a video right your amount of money depends on your legal leverage and I have no idea what your situation is every case is dramatically different but this video is meant to help educate you so that you can make a more informed decision on how to move forward now your severance package value will be tied to your legal leverage the best way to learn more about what your legal leverage is is to contact an employment lawyer and do a severance review after all there are no published averages for severance amounts and severance is not a legal right so the best way you can get an idea of what your case might be worth is to contact an experienced employment lawyer that's why I firmly encourage you to contact a lawyer in your state for a severance review if you are in California feel free to contact my office we do a lot of severance reviews and we hope a lot of people all right if you found this video to be helpful please consider giving it a thumbs up and subscribing to my youtube channel if you want to know more about employment law to subscribe you get a note when I publish future videos alright that's it I hope you have a fantastic day and I hope you take care [Music] [Music] you [Music]