MoveMakers & NewsMakers for February 13, 2019

Feb. 13, 2019 - See who is making news and moving where in the weekly Missouri Bar update "MoveMakers & NewsMakers."

St. Louis Area

Behr, McCarter & Potter PC is proud to announce that Joel Christensen received the St. Louis County Bar Association's Roy F. Essen Outstanding Young Lawyer Award for 2019.

Christensen earned his B.A., cum laude, in philosophy and political science from Knox College and his J.D. from Washington University School of Law. He is admitted to practice law in Missouri and Illinois.

Christensen is a member of the board of directors for the Lupus Foundation of America - Heartland Chapter, a member of the executive committee for the St. Louis County Bar Association, and an adjunct professor at Washington University School of Law.

Christensen and his wife, Becky, reside in the City of St. Louis with their son and daughter.

Armstrong Teasdale proudly announces the addition of partner and deputy leader of the firm’s employment and labor practice, Travis R. Kearbey. A member of the firm’s St. Louis office, Kearbey is a skilled employment and labor practitioner with more than a decade of experience focusing his practice in the areas of litigation, business transactions, counseling and labor law.

His litigation experience covers a wide variety of employment-related disputes, including retaliation and discrimination claims, leave-related and wage-and-hour claims, traditional labor law and arbitration matters, and restrictive covenant disputes. He has represented clients before numerous state and federal courts and various administrative agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Labor (DOL), the Missouri Commission on Human Rights and the Illinois Department of Human Rights. Additionally, Kearbey has successfully handled discrimination and wage-and-hour claims asserted on class and collective bases by private litigants and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the EEOC. His employment counseling and litigation experience arises from work with clients across many industries, including the manufacturing, hospitality and professional services sectors. He also has experience representing numerous clients in the education sector, ranging from elementary and secondary schools in Missouri to colleges and universities with campuses around the globe.

Kearbey also has broad employment experience at all stages of complex mergers and acquisitions— from diligence to integration. This experience includes the negotiation of employment-related terms in merger agreements, stock and asset purchase agreements, and on behalf of privately held and public companies. Kearbey’s wide-ranging experience in the M&A space also includes the negotiation of deal-related executive employment and separation agreements, transition service agreements and secondment contracts.

Kearbey provides both day-to-day counseling and long-term strategies for developing a culture of compliance, implementing employment policies, conducting companywide pay equity audits and remediation efforts, and structuring and implementing reorganizations and reductions in force.

Prior to joining Armstrong Teasdale, Kearbey spent more than a decade working with another St. Louis area law firm, where he most recently served as partner and co-leader of that firm’s labor and employment deal team. In addition to his outside counsel experience, Kearbey served as in-house counsel for a Fortune 100 company, holding the position of senior counsel, labor and employment.

Other Areas

The Federal Practice Group in Washington, D.C. announces the retirement of Christopher Graham, of counsel with the firm. He joined the firm in 2013 and became an immediate asset to clients by bringing his more than 30 years of legal perspective and insight, including to the firm’s national security law practice.

Prior to joining The Federal Practice Group, Graham had a long and distinguished legal career that spanned the state of Missouri, the federal government and the military. He served four terms as a Missouri state representative, was legal counsel to the Missouri state auditor, an assistant attorney general, a commissioner of the Administrative Hearing Commission, as well as an administrative law judge for matters related to the state's transportation industry. Simultaneously he served as the state judge advocate and ethics counselor in the Missouri National Guard, retiring after 30 years of service with the rank of colonel, JAGC.

In the federal government, Graham served as an administrative judge at the Defense Office of Hearings & Appeals (DOHA), where he adjudicated decisions on the revocation or denial of security clearances, including secret, top secret, and top secret/SCI, granted by the Department of Defense and 31 other agencies.

Graham also served terms as president of the National Association of the Administrative Law Judiciary and chair of the ABA, Judicial Division, National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary.

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