Barry M. Bennett

Partner

Barry M. Bennett is a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School. His broad litigation experience in representing unions includes suits to compel arbitration and enforce arbitration awards, contract enforcement actions, defense of duty of fair representation, Landrum-Griffin, and secondary boycott claims, and state court actions involving violations of the Employee Classification Act and the Prevailing Wage Act, public health claims and defense of allegations of strike misconduct, defamation, and tortious interference with contract. He also provides general counseling to unions, assists in contract negotiations and the development of organizing strategies, and has appeared on behalf of unions in hundreds of arbitrations and NLRB proceedings.

In addition, he has represented plaintiffs in employment discrimination, wrongful discharge, and whistleblower litigation in federal and state courts and before administrative agencies, and has an extensive practice representing individual employees in the negotiation of employment agreements and severance packages and in other types of employment matters.

Bennett was an associate with a firm in the Philadelphia area for five years before accepting a position in a Chicago firm in 1986. He became a partner in that firm four years later, and resigned his partnership in 1997 to join what became Dowd, Bloch & Bennett. He has been admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Seventh, Third, Eighth, Eleventh, and Federal Circuits, the United States District Courts for the Northern District of Illinois (trial attorney) and several other districts, and the Supreme Courts of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.