Ms Diane Dygert > Seyfarth Shaw LLP > Chicago, United States > Lawyer Profile

Seyfarth Shaw LLP
233 SOUTH WACKER DRIVE
SUITE 8000
CHICAGO, IL 60606 - 6448
ILLINOIS
United States
Diane Dygert photo

Work Department

Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation

Position

Partner and Chair of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Department

Career

Diane Dygert has spent more than 30 years focused on the rules and regulations of employee benefits. Diane has considerable expertise in the health and welfare space, where she has counseled and trained clients extensively on HIPAA privacy compliance, health care reform, and wellness programs, including implementing compliant plans and policies. Diane’s focus on executive compensation matters includes employment and severance agreements, stock options, restricted stock, and performance-based compensation, as well as the international aspects of employee benefits issues. She counsels clients on the establishment and operation of qualified retirement plans with considerable experience in large corrections and the defense of government audits. She works with clients on establishing and conducting appropriate benefits governance and fiduciary compliance processes—critically important in this era of intense scrutiny.

Diane has served as an adjunct professor for the LL.M. in Employee Benefits Program at The John Marshall Law School, the first graduate-level law school curriculum in the country. Prior to joining Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Ms. Dygert was senior counsel at Waste Management, Inc., where she was responsible for legal review of all areas of employee benefits and executive compensation.

Memberships

  • American Bar Association, Section of Taxation
  • The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC)

Education

  • JD, University of Michigan Law School
  • BS, Cornell University

Lawyer Rankings

United States > Labor and employment > Employee benefits, executive compensation and retirement plans: design

(Leading partners)

Diane Dygert  – Seyfarth Shaw LLP

The employee benefit and executive compensation team at Seyfarth Shaw LLP leverages both experience and bench depth to supply counsel covering a range of benefit, compensation and retirement plan issues to clients across the nation. The team is led from the Chicago office by the highly experienced national chair Diane Dygert, whose breadth of expertise covers the establishment, implementation and administration of benefit plans and fiduciary governance training alongside general transactional counsel. She is joined by Jennifer Kraft, who specializes in qualified retirement plans and traditional defined benefit plans, as well as Jon Karelitz, who has worked on some of the largest pension design projects in US history, and Ben Conley, who specializes in reproductive health benefit plans. Across the nation, the team is represented by experts in Seattle’s Liz Deckman regarding plan design legislation during M&As and New York’s Richard Schwartz in special tax and ERISA rules.