Faculty Profile: Martha Boyd

Martha Boyd is shareholder and chair of the Labor & Employment Group at Baker Donelson. Ms. Boyd advises nonprofits, for-profits and public companies on all types of employment issues. Ms. Boyd helps clients to manage their employees effectively and legally. She counsels companies as they contemplate discipline and discharge of employees and helps to ensure they are well-positioned to defend their decisions. She assists clients in drafting employment policies and employee handbooks that are tailored to their workplace and trains managers in policy implementation and interpretation. As a Certified Fraud Examiner, Ms. Boyd is trained in conducting workplace investigations of harassment or other misconduct and has conducted numerous investigations throughout her more than twenty years of practicing law. She devotes a significant amount of her practice to training executives and managers in understanding their legal obligations, union avoidance and positive employee relations, and workplace violence.

Her extensive experience working with foreign-owned companies help to bridge the gap between their understanding of U.S. labor and employment laws in comparison to their country of origin. She has developed training programs focused on helping managers understand and navigate the differences in managing their workforce.

Ms. Boyd has also performed human resources due diligence in a number of corporate acquisitions. When representing acquiring parties, she reviews all HR policies and practices, identifying potential risk for liability so that the acquiring party can factor that risk into the transaction. Gaining the familiarity required to provide this service necessarily puts her in the position of being able to help prepare the new company's policies – whether those policies come from the acquired company, the acquiring company or a combination of both – and ensure they reflect best practices.

A U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, Ms. Boyd now works with a number of nonprofits that provide support to combat veterans and their family members.