Cozen O’Connor attorneys Jay A. Dorsch and L. Stephen Bowers recently lectured on “Pension Plan Basics and Legislative Updates” for Kistler-Tiffany Benefits. Some of the topics Dorsch and Bowers covered included pension plan options for small employers and an update on deferred compensation rules.
A member of the firm resident in the Philadelphia office, Dorsch heads the employee benefits and executive compensation practice. He regularly represents clients in all aspects of employee benefits and executive compensation matters, and related fiduciary and tax concerns. He has extensive experience with qualified and non-qualified employee benefit plans and represents clients before the IRS, the Department of Labor, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. He has extensive experience handling the employee benefits aspects of mergers and acquisitions, the fiduciary issues pertaining to plan assets, and other commercial transactions. In addition, Dorsch has designed, drafted and implemented all types of executive compensation arrangements, including deferred compensation plans, top hat plans, SERPS and equity based compensation plans, such as stock option plans, and restructured stock plans. He advises clients on a regular basis regarding welfare benefit programs, and also counsels in connection with retiree medical benefits issues and the resolution of disputed claims for welfare and retirement plan benefits.
A regular lecturer on employee plans for the Practicing Law Institute and a member of its Employee Benefits Law Advisory Committee, Dorsch has also been named a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. He has also been selected by his peers as a Pennsylvania “Super Lawyer” from 2004-2008, appearing in Philadelphia magazine and Pennsylvania Super Lawyers. He is admitted to practice in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Dorsch is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (B.S. economics, cum laude, 1977), Rutgers School of Law – Newark (J.D., 1980), New York University Law School (LL.M. taxation, 1984).
Bowers, as associate in the Philadelphia office, practices with the firm’s Business Law Department, concentrating in ERISA, pension, profit-sharing and welfare benefit plans. He also assists clients in the areas of health privacy, corporate and tax law. Prior to joining the firm, he spent three years as a consultant for Mercer Human Resource Consulting and previously served as an investigator/pension benefit advisor for the U.S. Department of Labor.
Bowers is a graduate of the University of Scranton (B.A., 1994) and Boston University School of Law (J.D., cum laude, 1999). He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and is a member of the Administrative Law sections of the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts bar associations, and a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association.