Executive employment and noncompete disputes · Chicago, Illinois
Year of admission
Jurisdiction
U.S. District Court, 2010 · Trial Bar, 2013
U.S. District Court, 2016
U.S. Court of Appeals, 2014
Languages · English, Polish, Spanish
A sample film. The video tier carries one film of sixty to ninety seconds, self recorded to a supplied brief.
A description of the picture, not speech. A woman in a black suit and a white shirt stands on the forecourt of a glass fronted office building, folds her arms, and turns to look toward the camera. Nothing is said and no words appear on screen across the seven and a half seconds the clip runs.
Most people who reach Nadia are not looking for a lawyer in the abstract. Something has already happened, or is about to, and they need someone who will tell them plainly what their options are and what each one costs them. That is the conversation she has first, before anything is filed and before anyone is retained.
She takes a small number of matters at a time. Clients hear from her directly rather than from a coordinator, and the person who takes the first call is the person who handles the matter.
Nadia spent the first part of her career inside larger institutions, where she learned how the other side prepares, how long things actually take, and which arguments a court has heard a thousand times. She opened her own practice to do the same work without the layers between a client and the person reading their file.
She has appeared in state and federal court in Illinois and has taught continuing legal education to other attorneys in her field.
She answers her own phone when she can and returns messages the same day when she cannot. She writes in plain language, in letters and in filings both. She tells clients what she thinks rather than what is comfortable, and she says so early, when it still changes what they can do.
Clients are told what a matter is likely to cost before it begins, and are told again when something changes that number.
Nadia grew up on the northwest side of Chicago and never left. She rides the lakefront in every month that allows it, cooks for more people than her kitchen was designed for, and is a reliably poor but enthusiastic chess player. She and her husband have two school age children and a large and unhelpful dog.
Juris Doctor
Bachelor of Arts, Economics
Attorney and Counselor at Law
General Bar
Trial Bar
Bar of the Court
General Bar
Member, Labor and Employment Law Section
Member
Member, Employment Law Committee
Employment Law, Individuals, Illinois
Forty Illinois Attorneys Under Forty
Contributing author, employment law handbook
A former employer has written to you, or to the company you are about to join, and the agreement you signed years ago is suddenly the only thing anyone wants to discuss.
The equity, the bonus or the deferred account was treated as forfeited on the day you gave notice, and the plan document is being read back to you as though the answer were obvious.
You have been handed a separation agreement, given a few days to return it, and told that the terms are standard and the same for everyone at your level.
Nadia quotes a fee structure in writing before any work begins, and the figure does not change without a conversation first. Most matters fall into one of three shapes.
She reads the agreement, the correspondence and whatever has already been filed, then tells you in writing what your position is and what your options cost.
She writes to the other side, and then keeps writing until it is settled or it is clear it will not be.
Anyone who gives you a firm number for this at the first call is guessing.
What moves a matter up a band: multiple jurisdictions, an employer that has already filed, a deadline someone else set, and a document nobody can find.
Nadia takes executive employment and noncompete matters, and a small number at a time. Some things she will not take, and she says so on the first call rather than the third.
If the amount in dispute is smaller than what it costs to pursue, she will tell you that and tell you what to do instead.
She acts for the individual. This is a decision about which side of this work she does, not a comment on the other side.
These are their own practice and she is not it. She refers them, by name, to attorneys who do that work.
Changing lawyers mid case is occasionally the right move and more often an expensive one, and she will say which she thinks it is.
A demand letter is an assertion. It is one side's account of what your agreement means and what it believes you are about to do. It is written to be read quickly and to feel already decided.
It is not a filing. It is not an order. No judge has read your agreement and no judge has read the letter. Nothing in it has been tested by anyone.
I say this early because for most people it is the first document they have ever received that is written in that register, and the register is doing a great deal of the work. Read it a second time and notice how much of it is adjective.
What the letter does tell you is real, though. It tells you which clause the other side has decided to lead with, and roughly how much they already know about where you are going next. Both of those are useful to me.
What it does not tell you is what a court would do. It was never written to tell you that.
The letter and the agreement are two different documents, and only one of them binds you.
So I read the agreement first, before I read the letter properly. I want to know what you actually signed, what was attached to it, which version it was, and whether anything later replaced it or sat on top of it.
Then I read the clause the letter is relying on against the clause as written. Those are not always the same clause. A letter can describe a restriction as wider than the words support, and it very often describes it as clearer than it is.
I also want everything sitting around the agreement. The offer letter. The plan documents. What you were handed when you were promoted. What you signed when a company you worked for was bought by another one. People sign more than they remember signing, and the later paper sometimes matters more than the first.
The tone of the letter is a choice somebody made on a particular afternoon. The words of the agreement are the thing you are held to, or are not held to.
A restriction is not enforceable in Illinois merely because it exists on a page you signed.
Broadly, an employer asking a court to enforce one has to show that it is protecting something the law treats as worth protecting, rather than simply keeping a person out of the market. It has to show that what it gave in exchange was real. And it has to show that the restriction is reasonable in how long it runs, where it reaches, and what activity it actually stops.
Reasonable is not a fixed measurement. It is decided on the facts of the particular arrangement, which is why the answer moves so much between two people holding what looks like the same form.
That is the general shape of it, and it is only the shape. What any of it means for your agreement is a different question, and not one I would answer from the outside.
Quiet, mostly.
The first two weeks are for reading. I want the agreement, everything attached to it, the letter, and anything already sent in either direction. Where a new employer is involved I want to know what they have been told and who told them.
Then I write to you and tell you what I think your position is. Not what I would like it to be.
Somewhere in there we decide whether anybody writes back, and if so who, and how quickly. Sometimes a reply is the right move. Sometimes a reply is the thing that turns a letter into a case. That is a decision rather than a reflex, and it is worth taking the two weeks to make it properly.
Very little of this is dramatic. Most of the work that matters happens before anyone files anything.
A few things I would say to anybody on a first call.
Do not reply to the letter. Not to correct it, not to reassure anyone, not to explain that they have misunderstood you. Every sentence you write becomes a document in the matter, and you are writing it at the worst possible moment for writing.
Do not delete anything. Not messages, not files, not your own notes. Whatever the letter turns out to be worth, deleting is worse, and it is the one problem you can manufacture entirely by yourself.
Do not take anything with you, and if you already have, say so out loud to whoever is advising you before somebody else finds it.
Do not tell the new employer it is nothing. Tell them a letter has arrived and that you are having it looked at. People forgive the letter. They are far less forgiving about being surprised by it.
Do not sign anything else in the meantime. Not an acknowledgement, not a certification, not a form confirming you have returned everything.
Then call somebody. That part I would not sit on.
She told my client in the first meeting that half of what he wanted was not worth chasing. He hired her that afternoon.
I have been opposite Nadia twice. She narrows the dispute early, which is not something everyone in this area does.
Fees are quoted in writing before work begins. You will not receive an invoice for a figure you have not already seen.
I handle the matter. Where it needs a second set of hands, you are told who, and before they touch it.
First conversations are thirty minutes and there is no charge for them. She will tell you on that call whether the matter is one she takes, and if it is not, who it belongs to.
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