For six months immediately after he graduated from the University of Houston, Jon Bourgault spent most of his time in the presence of attorneys. He not only lived to talk about it, but cites the experience as critical to his choice of careers. “I was doing a variety of political work in Houston,” he recalls. “One of the jobs I took was managing the campaign of a woman who was running for the state bench, and I spent virtually all my time with lawyers. I found that all of them, regardless of the field they were in, did work that had an impact on people’s lives. And yet they were still able to retain enough intellectual distance to think about the larger issues involved in their work. It was that balance which drew me to become a lawyer.”

And it was that balance that drew him to an area of the law where almost every specific legal issue or dispute has broader social and public policy implications—employee benefits. After earning his degree from the New York University School of Law in 1999, Jon clerked for the Honorable Victoria S. Lederberg of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and then for the Honorable Maryanne Trump Barry of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then moved into private practice, where for the next three years he worked on issues related to single-employer and multiemployer welfare and pension plans as well as compliance matters arising from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Jon also wrote on fiduciary responsibility for the 2004 and 2005 cumulative supplements to Employee Benefits Law and contributed to the Midwinter Report of the Subcommittee on Fiduciary Duty of the ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law.

While he found much to value in his work at the time, when the opportunity to join Groom presented itself, Jon seized it without hesitation. “I’m relatively new to the practice of employee benefits law,” he says about his decision, “and I could not imagine any other firm or organization where I could have such ready access to so many people with expertise in every legal field related to employee benefits. Working at Groom is a leg up on reaching the very top of our field.”