Tahl Tyson, Employment Attorney in Seattle, Washington

Tahl Tyson is an international employment law partner at Littler with over 25 years of practice. She is a US-based UK solicitor, and is also admitted to practice in the US. She advises employers on UK and cross-border employment matters.

Tahl was in-house global employment counsel and a member of the HR senior leadership team for a global publicly traded company, where she advised on workplace issues spanning 40 countries. While resident in the company’s Paris office, she provided site leadership for the French subsidiary and had responsibility for all aspects of human resources and employment issues, including works council consultation and negotiations.

Tahl majored in Chinese studies at Yale and was among the earliest Westerners to study and teach in post-Mao China. She worked on China energy research as the recipient of a Congressionally-funded 3-year graduate degree fellowship at the East-West Center in Hawaii. She earned both a Masters degree in East Asian Studies and an MBA with a Pacific-rim focus. In addition to the People's Republic of China, she has also lived and worked in Taiwan, the U.K., Micronesia, Japan, Israel, and France.

Tahl’s litigation practice has included all contentious aspects of employment law, including non-competition and trade secrets litigation. She has defended employers in multi-million dollar individual and class action employment lawsuits, jury and bench trials, as well as, appellate argument to the Washington State and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. She has been an arbitrator for the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), represented unionized employers in grievance arbitration, and represented parties in mediation of high stakes disputes.

Tahl provides pragmatic advice to multi-national clients based on her practical experience with a wide variety of international and cross-border matters. Examples include:

• Multi-jurisdictional legal compliance programs
• Cross-border internal investigations and whistleblower hotlines, related data privacy issues
• Global policies, templates, such as employment contracts
• New market expansions
• Employment law aspects of restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, out-sourcing and in-sourcing, and layoffs (including situations implicating Acquired Rights Directive and TUPE)
• Contingent worker programs and local compliance
• Performance management and conflict resolution in cross-border situations
• Training managers and HR on the basics of how to manage legally in new countries
• Cross-border non-compete and trade secrets issues

Tahl's pro bono experience includes serving as co-counsel with the Office of Public Defense of King County, Washington, in felony criminal cases, including 3 strikes; co-counsel with Washington Protection and Advocacy Services in a class action case brought on behalf of patients at Western State Hospital seeking constitutional standards of care; and co-counsel with Northwest Immigrant Rights Project on multiple deportation cases.