David Sawyer Bio

David Sawyer is a partner in the Fort Lauderdale office of Lewis Brisbois and a member of the Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits and ERISA Litigation Practices. He advises on benefit and compensation matters for public corporations and private entities, senior executives, boards of directors and individual board members, ensuring that all pertinent details and issues are identified, analyzed and executed properly. David is an analytical counselor who is committed to providing the right results and to being accessible to those he serves. David provides multi-dimensional legal counsel on deferred compensation, incentive schemes, supplemental executive retirement plans, equity-based compensation, corporate governance, regulatory compliance, and executive employment contracts and severance agreements. He advises on the creation, execution and management of qualified retirement plans such as 401(k), defined benefit, multi-employer and collectively bargained pension plans. Having cultivated a comprehensive understanding of welfare arrangements, David has experience advising on medical, dental, vision and cafeteria plans. He also advises on the fiduciary responsibilities and plan asset issues relevant to prohibited transactions and unrelated business taxable income matters. David also brings substantial transactional experience to his practice, navigating clients through the often-sophisticated employee benefit issues that arise in mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, spin-offs, corporate restructurings and a variety of other commercial transactions. Specifically, he advises on the employee benefits provisions of purchase agreements and change of control, as well as the concerns surrounding golden parachutes, due diligence, treatment of sellers’ plans, and the integration of acquired employees and plans into the acquirers’ plans. Prior to practicing law, David served as controller for a large corporation and as a tax consultant for Arthur Anderson. This experience equips him with the requisite skills to provide sound advice on compensation and benefits matters from both financial and legal perspectives. He seeks to provide a more holistic approach to problem-solving, considering each client’s unique risk tolerance, monetization goals, and best and worst-case scenarios.