Houston Harbaugh Proud to Be a Lead Sponsor of the ACBA Labor & Employment Symposium

Houston Harbaugh is proud to be a lead sponsor of the Allegheny County Bar Association’s Fourth Annual Labor and Employment Law Symposium on Wednesday, November 18, 2026 at the Westin Pittsburgh. The full-day program offers attorneys up to 6 CLE credits, including 1 or 2 ethics credits, and features federal judges and seasoned practitioners from across Western Pennsylvania.

Four Houston Harbaugh attorneys will serve on the faculty, leading sessions on at-will employment, artificial intelligence and legal ethics, and eDiscovery. Shelly Pagac also served on the symposium’s program planning committee.

Houston Harbaugh Faculty

What’s Happening with Employment At Will?
9:40 to 10:40 a.m. (Breakout Session 2, 1 substantive credit)

Shelly Pagac joins the Hon. W. Scott Hardy of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and Nicole Daller of Horne Daller LLC. The panel reviews Pennsylvania’s wrongful discharge exceptions to at-will employment, the cases where courts have applied or rejected them, and recent decisions and pending appellate issues that may reshape their scope.

Defending the Algorithm™: Interplay of AI, Ethics, Privilege, and Work Product
1:10 to 2:10 p.m. (Plenary Session 2, 1 ethics credit)

Henry Sneath and Christopher Jacobs present the afternoon plenary with the Hon. Cathy Bissoon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. They examine how generative AI intersects with professional ethics, attorney-client privilege, and work-product protection, drawing on ABA Formal Opinion 512 and Pennsylvania Joint Formal Opinion 2024-200. The session also covers recent employment litigation such as Mobley v. Workday, with practical strategies for preserving privilege and building AI governance frameworks for in-house and outside counsel.

Navigating the Ever-Evolving eDiscovery Landscape: ESI Protocols and Common Pitfalls
2:20 to 3:20 p.m. (Breakout Session 9, 1 substantive credit)

Erica Pietranton joins the Hon. Patricia L. Dodge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and Mariah L. Passarelli of Cozen O’Connor. The panel addresses disputes over the scope of ESI protocols, pitfalls in collecting and producing modern formats such as cloud-linked documents, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, and metadata preservation and proportionality under the Rules. The day also includes sessions on non-competes, the NLRB, workplace harassment standards, wage and hour issues, independent contractor classification, and labor arbitration, plus a networking lunch.