Karen Pointer

Karen is a partner at Bartko LLP, a full-service law firm focusing on employment law, business litigation, business advice and counseling, and real estate. She co-chairs the firm’s Labor & Employment Practice Group. Representative Matters Karen represents clients in a wide variety of industries in all aspects of employee/employer relations and employment law. Her expertise includes day-to-day counseling of clients with respect to hiring, promoting, discipline and termination, contract negotiations, and compliance with state and federal employment laws, including wage and hour matters, leaves of absence, disability accommodation, and matters involving harassment, discrimination and wrongful termination. Karen also assists clients in the formulation, implementation and enforcement of employment policies and procedures, provides management training, and drafts a variety of employment-related agreements, including employment agreements, confidentiality and trade secret agreements, arbitration agreements and separation agreements. She has substantial experience conducting workplace investigations and training management and human resources personnel in conducting thorough and fair workplace investigations. Karen has significant experience litigating a wide variety of employment and business disputes, including disputes involving wrongful termination, harassment and discrimination, failure to accommodate, wage and hour violations, unfair competition, trade secrets and breach of contract. Karen has substantial experience conducting workplace investigations. She navigates expertly highly sensitive and complex investigations at all levels, including investigations involving managerial and nonmanagerial employees, senior executives, boards of directors, and non-employee third parties. Her expertise includes investigating complaints of harassment, discrimination, retaliation, implicit bias, bullying, whistleblowing, fraud, and other allegations of workplace misconduct. She has investigated allegations of single incident misconduct as well as allegations of patterns of misconduct, workplace culture concerns, and intersectionality of multiple protected characteristics.