William A. Nolan serves as the Managing Partner of Barnes & Thornburg LLP’s Columbus, Ohio, office, which he opened in 2009. He is a member of the firm’s Labor and Employment Law Department. Bill has extensive experience as a litigator, trial lawyer and counselor. His practice includes a broad range of issues that organizations face in our rapidly changing competitive, legal and workplace environments. In short, he works to help management structure organizations, practices and relationships to proactively minimize the business disruption of disputes, and to help clients prevail when and wherever those disputes occur.
Bill's litigation and trial work includes covenant not to compete and trade secret cases in federal and state courts throughout the country. He regularly defends employers in discrimination and discharge lawsuits and administrative proceedings, and is experienced in wage and hour, contract and tort litigation, and arbitrations and mediations.
He also has significant experience in workplace and organizational privacy and information management. Bill assists employers with issues arising from the impact of changing technology on litigation, the workplace and organizations, from employee monitoring to data privacy to electronic records management. In addition, he draws upon his trade secret and non-compete litigation experience to develop contracts and business practices to help clients protect valuable business information and navigate the various state laws related to this area.
Bill negotiates and drafts documents that form employment and other organizational relationships, including individual executive and employment contracts and restrictive covenants, collective bargaining agreements, employment-related provisions of corporate transaction documents, leased employee and other contingent work arrangements, and workplace and other policies and procedures.
Bill helps clients maneuver around the ever-increasing legal mandates, and has distinctive experience in employee health and leave issues and the many laws that those issues implicate, and he works with clients to design systems and practices to manage these challenges. He frequently counsels clients on workplace harassment complaints and investigations, wage and hour compliance, and lawful discipline and terminations. He also conducts manager and workplace training to ensure legal compliance on the front lines.
A former two-term councilman and mayor of Powell, Ohio, Bill is very involved in the community, serving as a past member and chair of the board of trustees and currently on the annual campaign cabinet of the United Way of Delaware County (Ohio), a board member and treasurer of the Community Foundation of Delaware County, charter member and steering committee chair of the Ohio Management Lawyers Association (OMLA), and a member and past chair of the Labor and Employment Law Committee of the Columbus Bar Association.
Bill speaks and writes extensively, and authored the Ohio chapters of four BNA state-by-state treatises, Trade Secrets, Covenants Not to Compete, Employee Duty of Loyalty, and Tortious Interference with Contracts. He also serves as a volunteer mediator for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
He is regularly listed in Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America® and Ohio Super Lawyers®. He is listed as one of Super Lawyers' Top 50 lawyers in Columbus for the second year and in 2009 was listed as one of its Top 100 lawyers in Ohio.
Prior to joining Barnes & Thornburg, Bill practiced law with Squire Sanders.