Theodore Rogers joined Sullivan & Cromwell in 1979 and was a partner from 1987 through 2020. His litigation activities center on two areas: labor and employment law and estates litigation.
As a senior member of the Firm’s Labor and Employment Law Group, Mr. Rogers represents employers with respect to all manner of labor and employment issues, including litigation of individual disputes and class actions, and provision of general advice and services, including workplace investigations.
Mr. Rogers is recognized as one of the top employment law attorneys in the country. He is one of only 11 lawyers in the United States ranked in Band 1 for Labour and Employment in the 2022 Chambers Global rankings. He also was selected as one of the nation’s 100 leading management-side attorneys in 2019-2021 by Lawdragon and Human Resources Executive—a designation he has been given in each of the last 12 years. He was recognized for Labour & Employment by Who’s Who Legal (2022), named the 2018 “Lawyer of the Year” for Labor Law - Management in New York and a leading lawyer in labor and employment law/litigation by Best Lawyers in America, and was named a Benchmark Litigation Labor & Employment Star (Northeast) for 2019-2021. In 2014 he was named New York City “Employment Law Management Lawyer of the Year.” He has also been ranked for the last 20 years in the top tier in New York among defendant-side employment lawyers in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business (2003-2024). He has been recognized in The Legal 500 – United States in the Labor & Employment and International Arbitration categories.
In his Estates Litigation practice, Mr. Rogers has litigated a broad range of cases, including will contests, trust accountings, and issues of fiduciary responsibility. Among other cases, he was lead trial and appellate counsel in a case that resulted in a significant decision by New York’s highest court on trustee fiduciary obligations that has come to be relied upon by lower courts.
Mr. Rogers served as a member of the Advisory Committee to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York’s Pilot Project Regarding Case Management Techniques for Complex Civil Cases. Mr. Rogers is a contributing author to BNA’s Workplace Harassment Law (2018), is a co-author of West Publishing Co.’s Employment Litigation in New York (1996) and Employment Law Deskbook for Human Resources Professionals (2001), and serves as a lecturer on employment law topics to many groups, including the Practising Law Institute’s annual Employment Law Institute and the Federal Judicial Center’s Workshop on Employment Law for Federal Judges. Among the topics on which Mr. Rogers has recently written and lectured are Sarbanes-Oxley Act whistle-blower claims, electronic discovery, employment class actions, restrictive covenants, harassment law, arbitration and ethics.
Mr. Rogers is a fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and is a member of the American Law Institute, and has served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Labor and Employment Law of New York University School of Law, the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section and the Labor and Employment Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.
