Inside the Labor Department’s Legal Brain Drain

A century-plus of combined legal expertise is leaving the Labor Department, setting up four key vacancies in an office with unheralded influence on the administration’s workplace agenda.

The DOL’s associate solicitors for employment and training (Jeffrey Nesvet), occupational safety and health (Ann Rosenthal), and administrative law and ethics (Robert Shapiro), along with the New England regional solicitor (Michael Felsen), are either about to retire or recently did so—all after lengthy careers in the senior civil service.

The institutional knowledge vacuum created by the four retirements from the DOL solicitor’s office could put a short-term strain on the agency’s regulatory and ...