Resources – Cline & Associates Attorneys at Law
Cline and Associates has developed ― with an intense investment of time and money ― an extensive range of resources and tools to use on behalf of its clients. These resources and tools include:
Demographic Database
The firm maintains a computer Database that contains detailed demographic characteristics on every city and county on the West Coast of the United States. This program allows us to select certain criteria for choosing “comparable jurisdictions” and automates reports regarding these jurisdictions. The program also allows historical comparison within and between jurisdictions. The Demographic Database can generate approximately 85 standard reports with the ability to produce over 1000 customizable reports. A menu of the available reports is presented here. The database is directly linked to our Compensation Database.
Wage and Benefit Compensation Database
The firm also maintains a wage and benefit Compensation Database which is directly linked to the Demographic Database. This database contains detailed information, which can be automatically generated, regarding wages, benefits, and other working conditions of nearly every law enforcement and noncommissioned bargaining unit in the State of Washington. It has the ability to analyze firefighter contracts upon demand. The Compensation Database contains approximately 50 standard reports with the ability to create nearly 1000 customized reports. A menu of those available reports is available here.
Collective Bargaining Agreement Bank
The firm maintains current and archived contracts on virtually every public safety labor agreement in the state of Washington. This collection of contracts is updated regularly and promptly and contains a contract status report. The archived collection often goes back covering many years of labor contracts.
Contract Term Database
The firm maintains a third database which classifies each of the public safety labor contracts and generates detailed contract language reports. These reports allow you to directly compare your actual contract language on specific issues to the actual contract language among your comparables. Our detailed analysis breaks the contracts down into 127 distinct issues. A menu of those issues can be viewed here.
Extensive Labor Law Library
The firm maintains an extensive labor law library consisting of both electronic and hard-copy resources. These resources enable us to rapidly and exhaustively conduct detailed research on any relevant labor law question. To provide the best possible representation for our clients, we invest heavily in electronic labor law subscriptions, including Lexis and BNA, which broadly encompass State, Labor, and Employment case law.
Extensive Reference Library
We also maintain an extensive and growing collection of resource documents pertaining to public safety employee working conditions. The library also includes Negotiation and Arbitration documents relating to the comparability and economic issues. Clients and Premium Content subscribers can access these materials through our Premium Content Website.
Brief and Research Bank
The firm maintains an extensive brief and research bank enabling it to make use of prior research. The bank is organized with a detailed classification system allowing quick access to these materials. We also maintain an organized bank of cases we have reviewed in our newsletter together with our analysis of those articles.
Interest Arbitration Information Bank
The firm has an interest arbitration information bank which analyzes over 100 distinct arbitration concepts and issues and digests each arbitration decision issue by issue. The case digests directly links to the page in the actual arbitration decision where the issue is discussed. We use this bank to evaluate contract proposals as well as present arbitration cases. Our Clients and Premium Content subscribers are allowed direct access to this information.
Interest Arbitration Decision Bank
The firm maintains a set of all released Washington interest arbitration decisions. As indicated above, these decisions are directly linked to the Interest Arbitration Summaries.
Interest Arbitration Proprietary Preparation Materials
The firm maintains detailed arbitration case preparation materials including a detailed 34 page case preparation outline, a 40 question Demand for Information checklist, and other case preparation tools.
Wage, Benefit and Inflation Trend Reports
As part of our ongoing database and newsletter analysis, we generate detailed reports about trends in wages, benefits, inflation and other relevant economic indicators. That information is used in negotiations and arbitration and is accessible to our clients and Premium Content subscribers.