Thomas D. Rees, Attorney

Mr. Rees heads High Swartz LLP's employment law practice. He serves employers on a wide spectrum of individual employment matters, including contract negotiation, preparation of policies and procedures, hiring and termination, and dispute resolution. Mr. Rees handles litigation in the areas of employment termination, restrictive employment covenants and trade secrets, employment discrimination, defamation, and employment contract disputes. Mr. Rees was named a ""Pennsylvania Super Lawyer of 2004"" in the area of employment law in Philadelphia Magazine and Law and Politics Magazine.

Mr. Rees has served for several years as Chair or Co-chair of the Employment Law Committee of the Montgomery County Bar Association. He has been a course planner and lecturer on employment law topics for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and the Montgomery County Bar Association. These topics have included restrictive covenants and trade secrets, employment contracts, employment torts, sexual harassment issues, employment privacy, ethics in employment law practice, and overall surveys of new developments in employment law.

Mr. Rees is a contributor, with other lawyers across the country, to a 50-state survey entitled Tortious Interference Claims Arising From Restrictive Covenants in Employment Agreements: A State-by-State Survey. Mr. Rees prepared the survey of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware law on tortious interference for this work. The survey was prepared by the American Bar Association and will be published shortly.

Mr. Rees serves as an employment arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association. He is a member of the AAA's national panel of employment arbitrators.

Aside from employment matters, Mr. Rees also handles complex litigation and dispute resolution in the areas of land use and zoning law, education law, and government regulation. Mr. Rees has served in the past as a lecturer and author for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute on subdivision and land development law, zoning hearing board relief, intervention and standing in land use proceedings, and ethics in land use proceedings. He is a past Chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Municipal Law Section and past Chair of the Montgomery County Bar Association Real Estate and Land Use Planning Committee.

Mr. Rees has been a partner at High, Swartz LLP since 1987; he first joined the firm as counsel in 1985. Before joining High Swartz, Mr. Rees was an associate with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Philadelphia, and from 1981 to 1985 was Deputy General Counsel to Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh.

• Pottstown School Dist. v. The Hill School 2001

• Pottstown School Dist. v. The Hill School 2000