Christine A Amalfe

Practice Areas

As Chair of the firm’s Employment & Labor Law Group, Ms. Amalfe manages lawyers across four Gibbons offices, overseeing legal, administrative, and business development functions for one of the firm’s most active business units, with clients among the world’s best-known companies representing industries critical to the local, state, and regional economies. She is also a member of the firm’s Executive Committee and serves as Human Resources General Counsel for Gibbons, and she is a co-founder of the internationally recognized Gibbons Women’s Initiative. She has been extensively involved in defending single plaintiff, multi-plaintiff, and class claims under state and federal employment laws. She also conducts multi-faceted employment counseling and training for corporate clients, public entities, and educational institutions. In addition to employment litigation and employment counseling and training, focus areas of her practice include employment agreements (executive compensation, trade secrets, and restrictive covenants); investigations; and issues in higher education.

Focus Areas

Employment Litigation: Ms. Amalfe handles claims for sexual harassment and discrimination, as well as state and federal whistleblower claims. She is regularly involved in matters alleging breach of express or implied employment contracts, intentional infliction of emotional distress, battery, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of restrictive covenants. Ms. Amalfe represents corporate defendants, as well as individual officers, directors, or employees who have been sued personally, for sexual harassment, negligent supervision, fraud, and negligent misrepresentation. She also has acted as a mediator in cases involving discrimination, harassment, and invasion of privacy in matters involving sexual identity and sexual orientation. Ms. Amalfe litigates claims before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), National Futures Association (NFA), and American Arbitration Association (AAA). Relatedly, she represents employers in litigation involving a variety of contract and tort causes of action and claims involving restrictive covenants, trade secrets, and other alleged violations of employment agreements. She has litigated claims involving the alleged theft of trade secrets and has sought and defended against temporary restraining orders and injunction applications. Ms. Amalfe also handles wage and hour matters ranging from administrative proceedings to FLSA collective actions, including a recent donning and doffing “off the clock” wage and hour class action filed in New Jersey, a case she strategically positioned to achieve an early settlement on very beneficial terms for her client.

Employment Counseling and Training: Ms. Amalfe also works with clients proactively, in order to prevent or resolve employment disputes before they lead to costly litigation. She adeptly guides clients on their compliance with federal and state discrimination, family and/or medical leave, whistleblower, and wage and hour laws, and she provides in-depth counseling in connection with, for example, workforce restructuring, employee terminations, discipline, and performance. Ms. Amalfe also conducts internal investigations of employee discrimination, harassment, and other alleged misconduct. She develops, revises, and presents employment practices training sessions, as well as comprehensive employee handbooks and manuals, all designed to help clients address such complex issues as effective hiring, performance management, terminations, and compliance with the broad range of laws governing the employer/employee relationship, as well as to prevent such or potentially disruptive issues as workplace harassment, bullying, and discrimination.

Employment Agreements – Executive Compensation, Trade Secrets, and Restrictive Covenants: Ms. Amalfe represents major companies, as well as executive-level employees, in the negotiation of employment and separation agreements that address such terms as compensation, equity awards, and restrictive covenants. Clients range from C-suite professionals in the insurance industry to private equity firm partners to Fortune 500 companies. Ms. Amalfe advises clients on non-competition, anti-raiding, and confidentiality provisions; waivers of discrimination and other employment-based claims; golden parachute and related provisions; and change of control provisions dealing with severance payments and accelerated vesting and funding of nonqualified deferred compensation plans and equity-based compensation plans.

Investigations: Ms. Amalfe conducts comprehensive investigations to ensure her clients’ compliance with a full range of federal and state employment laws when dealing with workplace conduct issues. She has handled numerous employment related privileged and non-privileged investigations, including investigations conducted for public sector and government entities, nonprofits, major regional universities, financial institutions, and many Fortune 200 companies, among others. These investigations address alleged workplace misconduct under codes of conduct and/or under the companies’ anti-discrimination and retaliation policies. Ms. Amalfe has also conducted investigations relating to student complaints under Title IX and other related laws. In addition, she regularly provides legal advice and counsel to internal investigators.

Higher Education: Ms. Amalfe has a strong higher education practice, with an emphasis on helping higher education clients achieve campus-wide compliance with Title IX and federal and state anti-discrimination laws, and recommending improvements as necessary. She also has prepared custom training programs for institutions’ academic and athletic staff members, focusing in particular on their responsibilities under Title IX, and has conducted numerous investigations for higher education clients of employee- and student-related complaints. Ms. Amalfe is a member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) and she has been appointed to the New Jersey State Bar Association Higher Education Committee.

Advancing Women in the Profession: Ms. Amalfe was recently elected at-large trustee of the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA). In this position, which is designated for a woman by the NJSBA bylaws and Board of Trustees, she will advocate for the women lawyers of the state and work to increase the involvement of women in the organization.

Throughout her career, Ms. Amalfe has been dedicated to work on behalf of the advancement of women at Gibbons and throughout the legal profession and business community. She co-founded the Gibbons Women’s Initiative (GWI), a Catalyst Award-winning effort involving more than 60 Gibbons women and 2,000 invited women participants who engage with each other in high-quality educational, networking, social, charitable, and mentoring programs. Within the broader business community, Ms. Amalfe has been an active member of the New Jersey Council on Gender Parity since its inception, helping to create national and statewide programs and research projects addressing gender equity issues in various professions. She successfully led fundraising efforts for a study of the legal industry, using her influence in the legal community to secure nearly 600 participants. She is a member of the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association, earning the organization’s Women’s Initiative & Leaders in Law (WILL) Platinum Award in 2008. In addition, Ms. Amalfe previously served as Trustee for NJSBA’s Women in the Profession Section and on its Task Force on Work-Life Balance. For the last several years, Ms. Amalfe has appeared on the New Jersey Super Lawyers list of the state’s “Top 50 Female Attorneys.”

Honors & Awards

In addition to Chambers USA, she is listed in Best Lawyers®, which selected her as 2020 Newark Litigation – Labor and Employment “Lawyer of the Year,” and New Jersey Super Lawyers, which regularly selects her to its New Jersey Top 50 female attorneys and Top 10 lawyers lists. She was selected to the ROI-NJ 2022 “Influencers: Women in Business” list and elected a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2015.