Mr. Russman focuses on several types of complex problems and solutions, particularly in the areas of employee benefit plans and executive compensation.

He has extensive experience with virtually every type of employee benefit and executive compensation and he leverages this experience to provide efficient, effective and innovative counsel to clients, whether it be for a client’s internal benefits or the products offered to their customers.

Mr. Russman assists clients in designing, maintaining, and correcting their retirement and welfare benefit plans, including:

• Defined contribution: 401(k) and profit sharing plans
• Defined benefit and traditional pension plans
• Cash-balance and other cross or hybrid plans
• Individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
• Cafeteria plans (which give employees the choice between cash and non-taxable benefits such as health insurance, dependent care and the like)
• Consumer-driven healthcare, including health savings accounts (HSAs), health reimbursement accounts (HRAs), flexible spending accounts (health and dependent care FSAs)
• Retiree health plans
• Educational savings accounts (ESAs)

Mr. Russman has drafted plan documents and helped to correct grants for stock options, incentive stock options, phantom stock units, stock appreciation rights, and most other forms of deferred compensation for private and public companies. In addition to correcting plan documents and providing ongoing counsel, Mr. Russman assists numerous clients with regulatory compliance in areas that require significant expertise, including:

• HIPAA
• Healthcare reform
• Internal Revenue Code
• ERISA (including fiduciary duties)
• COBRA
• Governmental benefits (such as Social Security and Medicare)

Mr. Russman has assisted clients with the negotiation of union retirement and welfare benefits and the associated multiemployer withdrawal liability issues. Mr. Russman also has experience in negotiating agreements for products, services, and software particularly in the area of outsourcing benefits administration (such as claims administration) and the agreements clients need to provide services to their customers (such as HIPAA Business Associate Agreements).

Mr. Russman serves on the Michigan American Jewish Committee ACCESS Board of Directors as well as the American Jewish Committee National Global ACCESS Steering Committee and the Commission on Contemporary Jewish Life. He has recently completed an Anti-Defamation League Glass-Sills Leadership Program and currently co-chairs the Anti-Defamation League Leadership Program. Mr. Russman frequently speaks on healthcare reform, HIPAA and other employee benefit and executive compensation issues.

In law school, Mr. Russman interned with the Office of the Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service and with Federal District Court Judge Avern Cohn.

Mr. Russman's transactions of note include the following:

• Helped a large employer design and implement its practices and procedures for HIPAA compliance, including its business associate agreements with third parties, training of employees, and implementation of corporate-wide policies.
• Oversaw the review, analysis, and integration of agreements with vendors and service providers for a multibillion dollar merger.
• Helped several clients understand and implement Michigan's new tax and withholding rules, with particular focus on the tax and withholding required on retirement benefits.
• Drafted plan documents and obtained IRS approval for a retirement plan that the employer had neglected for more than a decade.
• Designed, drafted, and obtained IRS approval for a retirement plan to enable the employer to satisfy its goal of providing retirement income to employees and paying the wages required under Davis-Bacon.
• Assisted an employer in its withdrawal from a multiemployer plan to ensure hundreds of thousands of dollars in involuntarily increased contribution requirements.

 

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