New York Law Journal Selects Neil Getnick as Innovation Awards Finalist
The New York Law Journal has selected Getnick Law managing partner Neil Getnick as an individual finalist for its 2024 Innovation Awards, which honors innovative efforts by individual lawyers and legal professionals.
Neil was selected as a finalist in connection with his work to achieve an historic collective bargaining agreement for the Chateau Marmont Hotel, which was vital to the hotel’s ongoing success and embraced by both management and labor. Although Neil is not an employment lawyer, he applied the negotiating skills he has developed throughout his career leading complex litigation and business investigations to achieve a successful outcome. In doing so, Getnick worked with hotel management, union leadership, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Southern California (SCLC-SC) President, Pastor William D. Smart Jr.
The most innovative aspect of the Chateau Marmont negotiations, however, is what has happened since the agreement. The parties have gone beyond the transactional aspect of a contract to the transformational potential of a covenant. They have formed an alliance to continue a campaign for social and economic justice. The SCLC-SC has called upon its membership to “celebrate our shared embrace and our vision for the future” bestowing on Neil, the Chateau Marmont’s owner, and the head of the hotel workers’ union, SCLC-SC’s 2024 Beloved Community Awards. As a first project, the hotel now features wines from a Washington state winery with grapes harvested by members of the iconic United Farmer Workers union founded by Ceasar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
In addressing his approach to the negotiations, Neil said:
We needed to overcome the cynicism of those who do not believe in win : win solutions or that good conduct is good business. We did that by revealing our shared commitment to social and economic justice and by explaining that we didn’t want to just tolerate, or even accept the workers and their union-supported efforts, but rather embrace them, emerging demonstrably committed to those shared values backed by concrete actions.
The New York Legal Awards honorees are selected by Law.com and New York Law Journal’s editors and reporters. The “awards are aimed at honoring the best the profession has to offer and those individuals and organizations who are taking the industry to the next level.” The winners will be announced in finalist categories, and all honorees will be recognized at an awards dinner on September 5.