Hester Vanderzee
Founding partner, Albany
Hester founded the firm in Albany after years on the employer's side of the table. She handles firings, severance negotiations and discrimination cases.
Hester knows how companies prepare for a lawsuit, because she used to help them do it. She now uses that knowledge for the other side: asking for the files a company would rather not hand over, and spotting the gaps in the story it tells.
She reads every severance agreement that comes into the Albany office herself, and is known among clients for doing the arithmetic on a legal pad while they watch.
Hester's admissions and education
Bar admissions
New York
2004
Courts
U.S. District Court, Northern District of New York
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Education
J.D., Albany Law School
B.A., Siena College
Languages
English
Dutch
conversational
Memberships
National Employment Lawyers Association
Albany County Bar Association
In her own words
Why Hester switched sides
People ask why I switched sides. The honest answer is a single afternoon: a termination meeting for a woman who had worked at the company longer than I had been alive. The file said performance. Everyone in the room knew it was her age. She signed, because no one had told her she could wait.
I want every person who walks into this office to know they can wait, and to know what they're signing when they don't.