David Copus is one of the nation’s leading employment lawyers and is a nationally recognized expert in class and collective action litigation. He is listed in The Nation’s, Best Lawyers,  Who’s Who in Executive and Professionals, International Who’s Who of Management, Labor and Employment Lawyers, Guide to the World’s Leading Labor and Employment Lawyers, and the International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers. (No aspect of this communication has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey. For methodology for selection for one of the honors above, please click on the link.)  The National Law Journal has named him as “among nation’s best litigators in employment law.” He has been a featured speaker at over 100 national conferences.

Mr. Copus has more than 35 years of litigation and counseling experience. He has defended employers in over 30 different U.S. District Courts and has argued cases in seven U.S. Courts of Appeal. He has defended many major class action/collective action lawsuits for such companies as W.R. Grace, Macy’s, Burdines, Westinghouse, General Electric, Tyco, FedEx Kinko’s, Weichert Financial Services, D.R. Horton, Sims Metal, and Intertek. Class Action litigation in which he has been the lead attorney is the subject of four books published by university presses.

He is a member of the American Bar Association’s Sections on Litigation and Labor and Employment Law. He is on the editorial board of Corporate Counsel’s Guide to the American with Disabilities Act. He has written numerous articles and books, including a book on litigation strategy published by the American Bar Association and a book on human resources policies published by the Society for Human Resources Management. He has also written a standard text on employment law, Employment Law 101, as well as books on OFCCP, affirmative action, and drug testing. Among his latest publications is an article on the use of statistics in compensation discrimination cases, published in the nation’s leading peer review journal on the use of statistics in litigation, the Journal of Forensic Economics. He has written and lectured widely on the effective use of expert witnesses in class actions and on the standards for the admissibility of expert testimony.

Mr. Copus graduated with honors from Northwestern University in 1963 and with honors from Harvard Law School in 1966. Following two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in India, he began his legal career in 1969 at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where for many years he headed the National Programs Division. In that capacity, he directed some of the largest class action investigations against employers and labor unions. He was also the lead attorney in the EEOC’s largest nationwide class action lawsuit.

Since 1977 he has been in private practice representing employers. He spent 17 years in the Washington, D.C. office of Jones Day before joining the Morristown, New Jersey office of Ogletree Deakins.

J.D., Harvard University, 1966
B.A., Northwestern University, 1963

Texas, 1966
District of Columbia, 1977
New Jersery, 2005
U.S. District Court, District of Columbia
U.S. District Court, District of Maryland
U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits
United States Supreme Court