Photo of Rachel Kessler

Rachel Kessler is an associate in the Labor & Employment Department.  In leveraging her education background in industrial and labor relations, Rachel represents clients in a wide range of both employment and labor-management relations matters. Her recent work has involved the representation of clients in a diverse range of industries, including financial services, health services, performing arts, media, luxury retail and professional sports leagues.

As part of her employment practice, Rachel focuses on employment-related litigations in state and federal courts, before state and federal administrative agencies, and in arbitrations. Rachel regularly assists in defending employers from claims involving discrimination, retaliation, harassment, breach of contract, whistleblowing, wrongful termination and other employment-related torts.  Rachel also counsels on a variety of employment matters, including workplace investigations. In her labor-management relation practice, Rachel counsels and represented clients in NLRB proceedings.

Rachel also maintains a strong pro bono practice and has twice been awarded Proskauer’s Golden Gavel Award for excellence in pro bono work. She has represented incarcerated clients in parole proceedings and is an active member of the Firm’s Reproductive Rights Task Force.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Rachel interned with Judge Denis R. Hurley in the Eastern District of New York and worked for a semester as a legal intern at Legal Momentum, the nation’s first and oldest legal defense and education fund for women. During law school, Rachel was a notes editor of the International Law Journal and a member of the Gender Justice Clinic.

On March 30, 2022, three judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overruled prior precedent allowing “implied” contracts to survive the expiration of a written agreement. The instant panel held, instead, that “implied” contract provisions that “have no durational limit of their own” are “governed by the