Profile: Forrest W Hunter

Management Labour and Employment

Biography: Management Labour and Employment

Forrest Hunter, a partner at Alston & Bird, concentrates his practice on representing management in labour and employment matters. He has served as lead counsel in numerous sex, race, age, disability, national origin and contract cases in federal courts throughout the United States. He has successfully argued and briefed cases in five federal circuit courts of appeals and has achieved summary judgment in over 80 per cent of the federal discrimination lawsuits he has handled. In addition, Mr Hunter has handled and won dozens of arbitrations for unionised clients, as well as negotiated collective bargaining agreements with multiple unions. He has also successfully tried a significant number of NLRB cases.

Mr Hunter also provides day-to-day labour and employment counselling and advice to more than 100 large and small clients on issues such as terminations and workforce reduction. In all workforce reductions during the last 20 years, Mr Hunter's clients have avoided litigation. He also routinely trains clients' supervisors and managers on union avoidance and prevention of employment litigation generally.

Before joining Alston & Bird in 1981, Mr Hunter served in the Office of Regional Counsel, department of treasury, where he was senior attorney handling employment and labour issues for the south-east region of the IRS.

Mr Hunter received his BA from the University of Virginia, and his JD from Emory University.