Robert (Bob) Murphy

Murphy Employment Solutions is the realization of an idea I had several years ago after referring a client to another firm because they could not afford the $700 an hour my firm was charging for my time. The client was an established family business, but the union matter they wanted us to handle was very complicated and the anticipated cost was so large they simply could not afford me. Come to think of it, I could not have afforded me, which made me wonder why the large employment firms could not set up a separate rate structure for smaller clients. The answer was and is because they don’t have to.

I was born in Detroit and grew up in Southern California eventually earning a BA magna cum laude from California State University Northridge. I was going to be a professional baseball player until some guy from USC named Tom Seaver struck me out on three pitches in my junior year which led to conclude that I would never earn a living playing baseball — of course I had no way of knowing he would eventually be “the” Tom Seaver and wind up in the Hall of Fame, but I digress.

I earned a JD degree with honors from Columbia University in New York and did post graduate work at Kings College Cambridge University in England thanks to a Ford Foundation Fellowship. It was wonderful and beautiful change after the rigors of three years in New York — the fact that my year there was the first year in the almost half century of its existence that Kings College admitted women has nothing at all to do with my warm memories of the experience.

I was sworn in as a member of the bar in a ceremony at the U S embassy in London then returned to California to begin my career at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles. 50 years later I retired from that career as senior member of Jackson Lewis PC. Along the way I traveled the country working with companies large and small, famous, and obscure and in virtually every industry, although much of the last 30 years was focused on serving clients in the Hospitality Industry and much of that was in Hawaii.

My practice has always been devoted exclusively to the representation of employers, most of that in matters before the National Labor Relations Board and in the defense of discrimination, harassment, and disability cases in state and federal courts across the United States.

For the past 30 years I have been working with employers to create and implement personnel policies designed to insulate them from litigation and unionization. I have also acted as labor counsel in connection with the purchase or sale of over 100 companies, written a ton of articles, trained several hundred executives and investigated at least that many discrimination cases. I am happy to report that I was largely successful as evidenced by the fact that many of my clients eventually became close friends.

When I retired from Jackson Lewis in September of 2022, I fully intended to relax, play golf, — I have represented several world famous golf clubs and resorts — and enjoy my time traveling, but after trying that approach for several months I concluded that retirement was not what I had hoped it would be, so I began to consider other options.

I don’t know what made me think of that family business I had referred to another firm years before but that memory led to discussions with former law partners and clients and that led to the idea of delivering my 50 years of success as a lawyer and problem solver to clients large and small including law firms and at rates tailored to the project rather than at a fixed hourly rate.

Welcome to Murphy Employment Solutions, a new concept in employment consulting.