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Your Duty to Mitigate (Looking for Work is Crucial)

A guide to your responsibility to reduce damages.

The short version: if you have lost your job, you must make a real, documented effort to find comparable work. This is called the duty to mitigate damages, and it is one of the most important jobs you have in this case. A strong job search log protects the value of your claim.

The fuller picture

What the duty to mitigate is

Mitigate just means "reduce." The law expects someone who loses a job unlawfully to make a good faith effort to reduce their losses by looking for new, comparable work. Comparable means roughly similar in field, level, and pay. You do not have to take the first offer you get, and you do not have to accept a big step down or a job far outside your field. You just have to be genuinely, actively looking.

Here is why it matters. A core part of your damages is back pay, meaning the wages and benefits you lost because of what your employer did. Your employer will argue that if you had looked harder, you would have earned more, and your damages should shrink. It is generally the employer's burden to prove you failed to mitigate. A well-documented search takes that argument off the table.

Your action item: keep a job search log

Track every position you pursue, from the day your employment ended. For each one, record:

  1. Company name
  2. Job title
  3. Date you applied
  4. How you applied (online portal, email, recruiter, in person)
  5. Any response, including rejections
  6. Dates of interviews and who you met with

Save the paper trail too: application confirmations, rejection emails, recruiter messages, and screenshots of postings. Networking counts as searching, so log job fairs, calls with recruiters, and applications through contacts. Update the log as you go rather than reconstructing it later. A contemporaneous log (one kept in real time) is far more convincing than one rebuilt from memory. Send us a copy periodically through the client portal, and ask your Case Manager if you would like a template.

How a new job affects your case

Clients sometimes worry that taking a new job will hurt their case. It is the opposite. Finding work shows the jury you did everything right, and it does not end your claim.

What changes is the math. Wages you earn from new work generally offset the back pay portion of your damages for the same period. If the new job pays less than the old one, the difference remains part of your claim. If it pays the same or more, your losses may stop growing from that point, but the losses you already suffered are still on the table, along with other kinds of damages. So take the good job when it comes. Just tell us right away, and keep records of your new pay.

One caution: do not quit a new job, or turn down a reasonable offer, without talking to us first. Either one can give the other side a mitigation argument.

Every case is different. Ask your legal team how this applies to yours.

Related pages

Still have questions? Your legal team is happy to help. Message us through the client portal or call the office, and we will point you to the right person.