J. Travis Hockaday

Practice Areas

Travis Hockaday leads the firm’s Employment, Labor and Human Resources practice. He is recognized by Best Lawyers® 2021 in Litigation - Labor and Employment, and by Benchmark Litigation as a North Carolina Labor & Employment Star for 2021. His practice focuses on providing counseling and risk management advice on significant employment-related matters to both public and private companies across a variety of industries, identifying and managing employment-related issues in mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations, and drafting complex employment and severance agreements for companies and C-suite executives. From 2010 to 2013, Travis provided counseling and risk management services on employment-related matters to a Fortune 500 company’s legal department under a secondment arrangement.

Travis has extensive experience assisting employers with worker classification and co-employment issues, work health (ADA, FMLA, GINA) matters, and wage and hour compliance. He also conducts investigations into discrimination and harassment complaints, develops workplace policies, and advises employers on terminations, disciplinary actions and handling employee grievances. Travis regularly defends employers in federal and state courts and agencies (including the EEOC, U.S. DOL and U.S. DOJ) against discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour and whistleblower claims (including systemic discrimination claims).

Travis frequently develops and delivers training programs for executives, managers and human resources professionals, and is a co-author of the North Carolina Human Resources Manual, the 700-page authoritative guide for North Carolina employers.