In September, the United States Department of Labor published the final rule raising the minimum amount of salary required to be paid to exempt executive, administrative and professional employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. This rule goes into effect January 1, 2020. The new minimum salary will be $684 per week, which is equivalent to $35,568 annually. The $684 per week may be paid in equivalent amounts for periods longer than a week: bi-weekly–$1,368,...

Recently we were completing an application for insurance in which the insurer posed the following question: "Does the Company make use of independent contractors or non-employee labor? If ‘Yes,’ provide number of such workers used in last 12 months." Our firm, as a business, uses several companies to provide services. We, for example, engage a vendor to maintain our technology. We use an outside company to shred documents so that discarded items do not reveal...