Attorney Tim Willoughby
St. Louis Employment Lawyer

Who Tim is, and how he came to care about employment law

(FYI: Some people ask “How do you say Tim’’s last name?” when they call. It’’s pronounced willow-bee. You wouldn'’t believe the variations we get.)

Tim Willoughby - April 2002 Photo courtesy of Gene

Summary of Tim’’s Legal Credentials

I am a St. Louis Missouri employment lawyer and a member of the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA). Check me out at NELA.org and the Missouri Bar Lawyer Directory. I'’m also a member of MATA - Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys.

I graduated in December 1996 from the law school at Washington University in St. Louis, completing the three-year program in 2 1/2 years. I took the Missouri bar exam in February 1997 and became licensed to practice law in Missouri in April 1997. I have been in private practice, concentrating in employment and contract law, ever since. I joined the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) right out of law school and am active with our local St. louis NELA chapter.

 

Tim Willoughby - April 2005

 

Tim’’s non-legal background

I am not wet behind the ears; I had a career before law school. I understand what it’’s like to be unemployed and struggling, because of my experiences growing up and also my experiences as an adult.

Read on for some details of those formative experiences, to understand how it came to be that I might have an interest in Employment Law.

Didn'’t wanna be a marijuana farmer

For much of my early life and formative years, my family struggled with unemployment and underemployment, and experienced all the problems that commonly flow from unemployment and lack of money. Some will disagree with this, but in my view the lack of money is one of the less serious repercussions of unemployment. The more serious repercussions stem from how people react to the fact that they are unemployed or underemployed.

At various times, my family had little. Growing up, I spent some years living in houses that lacked running water and plumbing. (Hey, I'’m not THAT old - we were just dirt poor). Yes, I hauled coal to the house, and liked to play in the coal bin. We had a cistern and trucked-in water. I drew water daily. The drainpipes from the roof fed into the cistern to reduce water expense. Living in houses heated by coal or wood, without running water, is no different than living in a decent cabin while on vacation, it’’s just that the “vacation” doesn'’t end. But I loved to read.

Good jobs in deep-rural Kentucky were hard to come by, as you might imagine. So we struggled a lot. Somehow, despite the odds, my parents instilled in me an interest in reading. That was the key to my survival in this modern world. I was not cut out to be a sharecropper, or work on the riverboats as a deckhand, or as is becoming increasingly common in rural Kentucky - marijuana farmer!

Eventually things improved. And now, I view my time spent in primitive surroundings as kind of a pleasant character building episode. I love technology and modern trappings, but I can make due with much less if I need to, and still be ok with life, because I'’ve been there before and it was ok.

 

Tim Willoughby - Oct 2004 I use this photo for my political blog, called The Radical Moderate

 

 

Memorable Navy Times

I finished high school in St. Louis in 1977, and joined the Navy right away. I was a Corpsman and spent my last two years assigned to the Marine Corps at Camp LeJuene N.C. You might not realize that “Marine Medics” are actually Navy Corpsmen.

Before the Navy lets a corpsman doctor any marines, they make you go to a special school that is almost like a second boot camp, run by Marines. So I had been in the Navy almost two years, and then had to submit to about a 6 week long second boot camp. Marching, PT, mock combat, weapons training, barracks, all the trappings of basic training (almost), but we also had a lot of combat medicine training.

Usually Corpsmen didn'’t carry rifles, just pistols. But lack of a rifle suggested to the enemy that you might be a Corpsman or maybe even a high ranking officer - and you became a valuable target! Here’’s a tip we passed around to each other, for what it’’s worth: If your enemy does not respect the Geneva Convention, and might fire on a Corpsman doing his job, then a corpsman might want to consider somehow picking up a rifle to take into battle, to appear like a normal soldier in the eyes of the enemy. [And yes, our M-16s jammed regularly in those days, just as the Vietnam vets experienced].

I had a great experience in the Navy, and my duty with the Marine Corps was the Best. I almost stayed in. I was honorably discharged after four years.

Pre-law school wheel spinning

After the Navy, I returned to St. Louis and tried to manage work and school. I had a good paying part time job that I got fired from after I was tardy too many times in a three month period. Before I got fired, I got the graduated discipline of verbal, written and final warnings. Then I overslept one day, and that was the end. Boy do I regret that day, because the loss of that job played a big role in my choice to drop out of college and abandon my dream of going to law school for some years.

Prior to attending law school, I had a nice career doing auditing for insurance companies. I reviewed the claims and underwriting practices of life and health insurance companies. At times I traveled extensively. I also performed a lot of specialized business analyst functions. I began programming PC-based business analyst applications in dBase III+ and Lotus123, starting back in about 1985, for myself and others to use within the company. My programming experience helped me when I decided to learn HTML and build this website. Here’’s an article describing how I learned HTML coding and the tools I used to build this website.

I was one of those people, like so many I talk to in my practice, who had the good fortune to be given a lot of specialized responsibilities by their employers even though they lacked key credentials. My final position was created for me by a CEO who had faith in me. I was not a CPA and did not have an accounting degree, yet I performed important and interesting audit and business analyst functions ordinarily in the domain of accountants.

 

 

Tim Willoughby - Aug 2004

 

Turning point

But after my employer went out of business I was reduced to trying to get hired by virtue of my resume, a resume that did not contain any industry-preferred credentials. No one would consider me seriously for anything like the type of position I was accustomed to. I thrashed around for a while trying to find my footing, as do so many of my clients. I tried the consultant route, and that didn'’t work in the long term. I took a job that I got fired from under circumstances that I considered unfair, and so I visited with some employment lawyers about suing, but they didn'’t like my potential case. I suffered from depression. Eventually I reached a turning point.

I realized that I had to make a break with the past and start fresh. I had always deeply regretted abandoning my dream of going to law school. Then one day in 1993 my 32 year old baby brother (who ended up becoming a Missouri State Representative) Philip Willoughby, announced that he had decided to go to law school. He encouraged me to do likewise before it was too late, rather than continue to live with the regrets. [My brother is out of elected government now, having unsuccessfully run for the Missouri Senate in 2004 (thereby giving up his House seat). The House maintains old membership data, and here is the Rep. Phil Willoughby info page at the Missouri House from his time there.]

Law School

So with the support and encouragement of my family, I did all of the enormous amount of paperwork and study required and took the Law School Admission Test in February 1994. I applied to 5 law schools, feeling that I had no chance of getting admitted to any of them. I got offered admission to all of them. I will never forget the feelings of dread and then elation I experienced in Spring 1994 when I opened the envelope from the first law school to answer my application and saw that I had been offered admission. Law schools don'’t mind admitting older students, because it fosters diversity. I was 35 years old when I started law school in 1994, and 37 when I completed it.

Practicing Employment Law

Practicing employment law was natural for me, because I can relate so well to the problems that flow from unemployment, and to the feelings of distress suffered by people who become unemployed. I thought I might be able to help people get a little bit of justice who are living through what I have lived through.

My business experience has given me a good foundation for understanding the interpersonal and political dynamics of corporate culture, and this understanding helps me to give what I think to be high quality practical advice to people having problems related to work. My business experience has also helped me in practicing the litigation aspects of employment law, because I have a lot of direct experience working within the corporate hierarchy and I know how they operate and some of the games they play.

If I had a major regret about the practice of law, it would be The Sorry state of the employment protections for residents of Missouri. The court decisions interpreting the existing laws are too often unfavorable to employees, and the laws themselves are not strong enough, and too many laws are missing from the statute books that ought to be there in a modern and just Missouri. I am unable to help most people who need help. Either no law exists that would let me help such people, or the chance of success is relatively low and I cannot afford to take on their cases without charging more fees than they can pay.

If you would like some more information about how the laws are weak and how unfavorable the court decisions are, please read the writings I have placed on this site under the various headings. If you would like to do something about the problem of the lack of adequate legal protections for working Missourians, then write or call your State Representative and Senator and tell them how you feel. Find out the name and address of your Missouri state senator, and Find out the name and address of your Missouri state representative here.

You can bet your last dollar that the Chambers of Commerce and other commercial interests are working hard to make sure that the Legislature does not do anything to improve the employment law protections of Missourians. By way of example, the most recent significant legislative change in employment law in Missouri was a law in 1999, §290.152, to provide businesses with immunity from punitive damages for defamation when they defame someone in a formal letter of reference to a potential new employer.  View RSMo. §290.152.

There was another change in early 2003 that was actually favorable, but it took judges to make that change, not the legislature, and it regarded the availability of jury trials in discrimination cases. I talk about this development in my Sorry State article as a rare Fixed problem. But most of our employment law deficiencies cannot be fixed by judges. We need legislators who care about fair employment practices, regardless of what political party they belong to.

We have backslid in Missouri, though, with the elections of 2004. The complete Republican takeover of Missouri government will almost certainly make it nearly impossible to see any legislative improvement in the lives of Missouri workers. On the contrary, expect a huge push to make it harder to get Workers Compensation, and harder to get justice for personal injuries, among worker-unfriendly Republican initiatives. The unemployment insurance and workers compensation systems give benefit of the doubt to the claimants. Missouri Republicans want to change that. I'’ve had long experience handling unemployment issues, and the “reforms” that have occurred are absolutely devastating for working people who are in need.

Thanks for your interest.

If you want some more background about how this website evolved, Here’’s my info page explaining something about the goals of this employment law website..

(Thanks to Gene for bringing in his Sony Mavica one day, which writes to floppy discs that he gets for free after rebate.)

Tim's Missouri Employment Law
is by Attorney Tim Willoughby

Tim is a St. Louis Missouri employment lawyer and a member of the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA). Visit NELA.org and the Missouri Bar Website (see the directory of lawyers).