Attorney List

Eugene S. Friedman

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 20:39:18 GMT

Eugene S. Friedman founded the firm in 1987. Mr. Friedman is a leader in the fields of labor and employee benefits law, and he has represented unions and employee benefit plans for over 50 years. He has extensive experience in collective bargaining, union organizing, and advising union officials. He litigates before federal, state, and bankruptcy courts and before administrative agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, as well as arbitral forums. He advises unions and boards of trustees of employee benefit plans on compliance with a variety of laws. Mr. Friedman also counsels on withdrawal liability matters, prepares and reviews government agency filings, drafts plan documents, and advises on the administrative and operational day to day work of the firm’s union and benefit fund clients.

Mr. Friedman co-authored "Withdrawal Liability: Exemption from and Enforcement of Payment," (with Erinn Weeks Waldner), published in Compensation, Work, Hours and Benefits, Proceedings of the New York University 57th Annual Conference on Labor (Jeffrey M. Hirsch & Samuel Estreicher eds., 2009) and “Illegal and Unauthorized Strikes in Violation of Collective Bargaining Agreements: A Union View,” for the 36th Annual Conference on Labor, NYU. He has lectured at the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education, New York University Conference on Labor, Practicing Law Institute, and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans conference. Mr. Friedman served as a member of the New York State Task Force on Plant Closings and the Labor and Workforce Development Policy Advisory Committee of the Transition Team of New York Governor-Elect Eliot Spitzer. Mr. Friedman served in the United States Navy from 1964-65. He is listed in “Who’s Who in American Law,” “Who’s Who in America,” “The Best Lawyers in America,” and “Super Lawyers,” and is "AV" Rated by Martindale-Hubbell. Mr. Friedman was selected by the peer review guide "Best Lawyers" as the 2013 Lawyer of the Year in New York City practicing labor and employment litigation.

He is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Chairman, Committee on Labor and Employment Law, 1987-1990), the American Arbitration Association Labor Law Committee, the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance, and the Advisory Board for the NYU Law School Center for Labor and Employment Law.

Mr. Friedman graduated with an LL.B. from Columbia University Law School in 1964 and obtained his B.A. from New York University in 1961.

He is admitted to practice in New York, the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fifth, Eleventh and District of Columbia Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

William Anspach

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 06:51:37 GMT

William Anspach joined the firm in 1994 and became a partner in 2002. Mr. Anspach practices labor, employee benefits, and wage and hour law. He advises unions and boards of trustees of employee benefit plans on compliance with a variety of laws. He also litigates in the federal, state, and bankruptcy courts and before administrative agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, as well as in arbitral forums. He conducts contract negotiations and advises on the administrative and operational day-to-day work of the firm’s union and benefit fund clients. He also represents union members and their families in consumer bankruptcy, mortgage loan modification and general civil litigation.

Mr. Anspach has served on numerous labor and employment panels, including commenting on labor and employment cases at the New York City Bar's Supreme Court Round-Up, and commenting on joint employer and artificial intelligence issues at the NYU Annual Conferences on Labor. He has served the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance in the area of voter protection.

He is a member of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance.

Mr. Anspach graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1993 and obtained his B.A. from Haverford College in 1986.

He is admitted to practice in New York and in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, as well as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Eleventh Circuit.

Anusha Rasalingam

Thu, 02 Jul 2015 07:07:30 GMT

Anusha Rasalingam joined the firm in 2003 and became a partner in 2012. Prior to joining the firm, she worked in the Legal Counsel Division of the Office of the Corporation Counsel for the City of New York, drafting legislation and advising the mayor and city agencies.

Ms. Rasalingam practices primarily in the area of employee benefits law. She provides advice to boards of trustees of multiemployer benefit plans on compliance with a variety of laws, including ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act. She drafts plan documents and amendments, and advises on fiduciary issues, benefit claims, plan design and administration, qualified domestic relations orders, and works with plan service providers and staff concerning the operational day to day work of the firm’s benefit fund clients. Ms. Rasalingam also prepares and reviews government agency filings, including DOL and IRS audits and determination letter reviews, where she has obtained favorable results and negotiated closing agreements on behalf of single and multiemployer plans. She also negotiates vendor agreements, including investment management agreements, and oversees complex transactions where clients invest in alternative investments, such as private equity and fund of fund investments. As a litigator, Ms. Rasalingam represents plans in withdrawal liability arbitrations and in state and federal courts, including defending claims against benefit fund trustees and collection of unpaid benefit fund contributions and withdrawal liability, as well as representing union clients in arbitrations. Ms. Rasalingam also works with union members and their families in landlord/tenant, matrimonial proceedings, and wills and trusts.

Ms. Rasalingam is a member of the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance, the New York State Bar Association, and the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans, and contributed the article “New DOL Service Provider Rules Finalized” to Benefits magazine, published by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. In 2013, she participated in the New York City Bar's program "Implementation of the Affordable Care Act: Implications for 2014 and Beyond" and the NYU 66th Annual Conference on Labor discussing "Significant Issues for Unions Under the ACA," and writing the article "From Panacea to Pandora's Box: Challenges Under the Affordable Care Act for Unions and Multiemployer Health Plans" to the symposium publication from the conference. In 2015, she authored a piece for the July issue of Benefits magazine entitled "Collective Bargaining Under the Pension Protection Act," and has been a presenter and moderator at the international Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans annual conferences. Ms. Rasalingam also participates in conferences presented by the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Aliance as a presenter on a regular basis.

Ms. Rasalingam was selected as a 2014 New York Metro Rising Star, an honor reserved for those lawyers who exhibit excellence in practice, and has been selected as a Super Lawyer in the Employee Benefits practice area each year since 2015.

In 2024, Ms. Rasalingam was appointed to a three-year terms as a member of the DOL ERISA Advisory Council representing employee operations.

Ms. Rasalingam graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1999 and obtained her B.A. from Yale University in 1996.

She is admitted to practice in New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

Benjamin P. Hollander

Wed, 21 May 2025 17:00:13 GMT

Ben Hollander joined the firm in September 2024. Prior to joining the firm, he clerked for the Honorable Kimba M. Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Mr. Hollander graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law in 2023, with a specialization in Public Interest Law and Policy and Critical Race Studies. During law school, Mr. Hollander was a co-chair of both the Labor and Employment Law Association, and the Labor and Economic Justice Clinic. He also participated in the Immigrant Family Legal Clinic and the Law, Organizing and Low-Wage Workers practicum with UNITE HERE Local 11, and he was a staff editor for the Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture, and Resistance. Mr. Hollander authored a paper titled It’s the Same Story the Crow Told Me: Uber’s Invocation of Newness as an Old Employer Tactic, which was awarded a second-place designation in the 2023 Louis Jackson Memorial National Student Writing Competition. Publication of the piece is forthcoming in the ABA J. Lab. & Emp. L. He worked his law school summers with the labor law firms Bush Gottlieb and Cohen Weiss and Simon, and with the California Teachers' Association.

Before law school, Mr. Hollander worked as an organizer for UNITE HERE Local 25, where he supported union members in their efforts to build workplace democracy and power, and he worked on campaigns which successfully organized thousands of nonunion employees through NLRB and card-check campaigns. Mr. Hollander graduated from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 2016. As an undergraduate, he conducted first contract research with Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner.

He is admitted to practice in New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

In Memoriam: Amanda Bell

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 04:57:05 GMT

We are deeply saddened by the passing of our colleague Amanda Bell.

She endured her long illness with extraordinary grace and courage.

We always admired Amanda so much. Prior to law school, Amanda worked as a union organizer for over ten years, tenaciously battling against anti-union employers, on behalf of janitors, hotel employees, television writers, and garment workers. She worked on numerous new organizing and contract campaigns all over the country, including Puerto Rico, the Central Valley of California, Florida, Oregon, and Washington, DC. She became fluent in Spanish, and learned Chinese, in order to more effectively serve the cause.

Amanda’s passion for improving the lives of working people was matched by a formidable intellect and a wealth of creativity. Amanda graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale with a B.A. in History, and was a Kent and Stone scholar at Columbia Law School, which she attended on a public interest scholarship. Beyond her academic talents, Amanda was a talented graphic artist and happily employed those skills in creating campaign materials and picket signs, especially during her time as a union organizer.

We felt lucky to have Amanda at our firm. Aside from being a creative and dogged lawyer, Amanda was a kind and generous colleague, always ready to offer her time and energy to co-workers. Our clients recognized her intelligence and diligence, but they also valued her passion – there was never any doubt which side she was on.

Amanda also performed an impressive amount of pro bono work during her free time, in particular on behalf of undocumented immigrants.

Amanda will be greatly missed, and she will always be remembered by her family and friends, by her co- workers, and by so many she fought for.