About
I represent employees — only employees — across California. Before that, I defended employers. Before that, I ran a business and managed people myself. And before any of it, I was the employee: I asked for accommodations, and three months after I was hired, I was fired. Every chair in the room — that isn't a figure of speech. It's why this practice exists.
Before law school, I earned an MBA and spent years running a business — a team of twenty, with oversight of some five hundred employees. I made the hard calls myself, including letting people go: seven, over those years, never lightly. That matters here. Not every firing is wrongful — some are necessary — so when I tell you that what happened to you crossed a line, it isn't reflex. I know where the line is. I've stood on both sides of it.
Then I became a lawyer, and for my first years I defended employers. I'm not sorry I did — there is no better education in how these cases are actually valued, staffed, and fought than the inside of the defense. I know what their playbook says because I used to run it. That knowledge belongs to my clients now. But I couldn't stay on that side. I wanted to represent the person, not the institution, and I've done nothing else since. Employees only.
I spent five years at Lynch, Gilardi & Grummer, a respected San Francisco boutique, doing straight litigation — all day, every day, taught by some of the most experienced trial lawyers I've known. It's why I'm comfortable in a fight, if a fight is what the other side chooses.
That’s the combination I bring: litigation learned the hard way, and the judgment to see what a case is actually worth — not what the other side would like to pay. Every demand I make is backed by a complaint ready to file the day they’d rather fight than resolve. Most of the time, they resolve.
I practice on my own, but I don't practice alone. For four years, one of California's most respected employment lawyers has steadily sent me cases — the overflow he doesn't have time for, and the hard ones. He sends them because he trusts me to carry the litigation. Earlier in my career, I co-counseled dozens of cases alongside a senior trial lawyer, now retired, who taught me a great deal.
I'm a member of the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA) and a graduate of its 2026 Trial College. That connects me to a network of serious trial attorneys, and it runs in both directions. When a case is high-value and heading for trial, I bring them in; increasingly, they ask to be brought in on mine. What that means for you is plain enough: you get a lawyer who answers his own phone, and, when the case calls for it, a trial team behind him.
Credentials don't run a case day to day. These four things do.
I listen, and then I tell your story. I hear the whole thing, in your words and in order, without rushing you. Then comes the part that actually decides cases: turning what happened to you into a story that persuades. That’s the craft — more than anything else on this page. We'll work on it together before anything goes out.
I keep you updated. It's your case and your life. I explain things in plain English, I answer quickly, and nothing in your case happens without you knowing why. The most common complaint about lawyers is that they go silent. I don't.
I work collaboratively — with you, and usually with opposing counsel too. I'm not a scorched-earth lawyer for its own sake. The goal is to get you where you need to be. Most of the time you get there faster — and better — without turning the case into a war.
Your interests come before mine — and I'll show you the math. On a contingency, the quickest path to my fee is an early settlement. That is not how I work. When I believe we've reached the last, best offer, I say so. But it's your call, always. If you want one more round, we go one more round. I am not always right: more than once lately, a client has sent me back after I'd called an offer the top — and they were right. That is the job. You set the goal; I apply the pressure.
I take fewer cases than a high-volume firm, on purpose, so each one gets my full attention. The honest tradeoff is that good employment cases can take a while. I don’t turn files over fast to clear my desk. If you want the quickest possible payout, I’m probably not your lawyer. If you want someone who will give your case everything it deserves and stay with it until it’s right, I am.
The one exception is severance and negotiated exits — by their nature, they tend to resolve fast. That's one of the reasons I enjoy them. Everywhere else, I trade speed for thoroughness, and my clients are glad I do.
Early on, I asked my employer for some accommodations — reasonable ones, the kind the law is written to protect. Three months after they hired me, they fired me.
So when I built my plaintiff-side practice, my first client was me: my own case, my own timeline, my own folder of documents. I learned this work from inside it — what the letter looks like when it lands, what the first week of no-paycheck feels like, and what it takes to make an employer answer for the choice.
It has never stopped making me angry, how casually companies throw a person out on the street. That anger, kept under control and put to work, is a good part of what you're actually hiring. It's also why the work fits me — it lets me be exactly who I am. When you tell me what happened, I'm not guessing at any of it.
The first conversation is free and confidential.