Amy Pocino Kelly is the deputy practice leader for the employee benefits and executive compensation practice. Amy’s practice focuses on providing solution-oriented and strategic day-to-day guidance on employee benefits plan matters to plan sponsors, including public and private companies, Taft-Hartley employee benefit plans, tax-exempt organizations, and governmental employers. She counsels clients on the design, governance, operation, and compliance of qualified and nonqualified retirement plans, equity and executive compensation arrangements, and welfare benefit plans. Amy also represents plan sponsors in audit and correction matters before the US Department of Labor (DOL) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Amy provides benefits and executive compensation counseling to assist clients in integrating, changing, or terminating benefits plans. During and after mergers and acquisitions, she oversees due diligence reviews of benefit plans and handles executive compensation for key management. She also supervises the design and implementation of retention agreements and analysis of the application of Sections 280G and 409A of the Internal Revenue Code. Collaborating with management, in-house counsel, members of boards of trustees, consultants, and board compensation committees, she helps develop equity compensation and executive plans and agreements. She also represents senior management teams in merger and acquisition transactions, including leveraged buyouts.
In addition, Amy counsels clients on plan governance and fiduciary obligations, including investment issues and prohibited transactions. To keep clients in compliance with US federal rules, she helps them identify and correct administration or document failures in accordance with the IRS Employee Plan Compliance Resolution System. She also guides them in analyzing and fixing fiduciary failures under the DOL’s voluntary correction program.
Amy is also sometimes called in by other firms as a consultant on the employee benefits, employment, and labor issues that arise in their clients’ transactions.
Amy regularly speaks on employee benefits topics at external and co-hosted events and presentations, and in Morgan Lewis–hosted webinars, roundtables, and events. To help organizations committed to education, human rights, the arts, athletics, and low income and unhoused people, Amy provides pro bono employee benefits advice and counseling. She also serves as a member of certain committees of the Board of Directors of Women Against Abuse.
Band 1, Employee Benefits & Compensation, Pennsylvania, Chambers USA (2022–2024)
Recommended, Labor and employment: Employee benefits, executive compensation and retirement plans: design, The Legal 500 US (2022–2024)
Recommended, Labor and employment: Employee benefits, executive compensation and retirement plans: transactional, The Legal 500 US (2016–2021, 2023, 2024)
Recommended, Labor and employment - Employee health and retirement plans, The Legal 500 US (2017, 2019–2020)
Ranked, Labor, Employment: Employee Benefits & Compensation, Pennsylvania, Chambers USA (2012–2021)
Listed, Lawdragon 500, Leading US Corporate Employment Lawyer (2022)
Member, Law360, Practice Group of the Year, Benefits (2022)
Member, Law Firm of the Year, Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation, Chambers USA (2019)
Member, Best Lawyers – Best Law Firms, Law Firm of the Year, Employee Benefits (ERISA Law) (2019)
Listed, Philadelphia Business Journal, Best of the Bar, Tax/ERISA (2018)
No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey. A description of the selection methodology for the above awards can be found here.