The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Babak Yousefzadeh, Partner—Labor & Employment (2022)
Babak represents employers in a full range of employment law matters, with a focus on litigation and class actions, including significant experience defending employers at trial, arbitrations, and administrative hearings. His experience includes advising and litigation on matters involving all forms of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation issues; breach of contract disputes; wrongful termination claims; wage and hour issues; independent contractor status; workplace investigations; discipline; grievance; workplace violence; Labor Code violations; and other statutory and contractual obligations. He is experienced with single plaintiff, multi-plaintiff, and class action proceedings, and practices in both state and federal bodies, in all applicable forums.
Babak also specializes in litigation avoidance and regulatory compliance counseling, provides harassment/discrimination prevention and regulatory compliance trainings, and drafts transactional documents such as employment-related agreements, employee policies and handbooks, and regulatory-based policies and agreements. He also advises unionized employers in the often technical space where traditional labor (collective bargaining agreements) intersects with state statutory employment matters.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
I represent employers, small and large, broadly with respect to their employment law needs. Employment is unique in that it encompasses three major areas of law: litigation, transactional work, and advice and counsel. The first category, litigation, is what people generally think about when they think about L&E. In my practice, litigation is broadly divided into three categories: (1) the “single plaintiff” type cases involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, failure to accommodate, breach of contract, etc., where we usually represent employers who have been sued in court; (2) class actions, usually alleging various wage and hour violations against employers (such as inaccurate wage statements, failure to provide meal or rest breaks, etc.); and (3) defending against administrative agency charges, such as the EEOC or DFEH. My employment practice also consists of “transactional” work, such as proactively establishing policies for clients to ensure they remain compliant with state and federal law, and drafting various types of agreements, such as hiring agreements, severance agreements, etc. Finally, a significant part of my practice involves giving clients advice, in real time, on employment-related questions that come up daily, ranging from hiring and firing, to discipline, leaves and accommodations, vacation and sick related issues (including COVID-19 related issues), and more. The idea is to help employers comprehensively by establishing compliant policies and agreements, giving them advice as issues arise, and then being able to defend them in litigation where lawsuits arise.
What types of clients do you represent?
I represent clients from 5 to 20,000 employees in a wide range of industries. I represent clients in the sporting industry, like the Golden State Warriors and San Francisco Giants. I also represent clients in healthcare, including larger clients, such as Kaiser and HCA, and smaller clients, such as dental and medical practitioners with a smaller group of employees. I have clients in the tech industry, from larger ones, like Sunrun and Curative, to smaller startups such as KlearNow and Extend. Many clients are in the transportation industry, with bigger companies such as Knight-Swift (the largest trucking company in the country) and Tesla, and regional companies, such as G&C Auto Body (in Northern California). Finally, I represent clients in the retail/food and beverage industries, such as Costco, Save Mart, Smart and Final, and Ross Retail stores (many of whom also have a transportation component).
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
My cases largely fall into the three categories I discussed above: single plaintiff cases, class actions, and administrative agency charges.
My single plaintiff cases tend to involve issues of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, and failure to accommodate. In these cases, an employee has usually separated from the company, and is claiming the separation was unlawful because it was based on discrimination or harassment (often disability-, gender-, or race-based) or retaliation (e.g., the employee claims to have taken a leave of absence or complained about some safety issue). The employer almost always has separate and legitimate reasons for the employee’s separation, involving performance, attendance, insubordination, etc. That sets up the opposing views of the parties, and leads to litigation. These types of cases are interesting because they tend to involve more of a “human element.”
My class action cases, by contrast, are much more analytical and technical, and by comparison to the singe plaintiff cases, a bit more “dry.” But they are often analytically much more challenging. These cases often involve whether there have been technical violations of wage and hour law, such as whether the employer correctly calculated the regular rate of pay for purposes of calculating overtime. By way of one example, this may arise if a gift card is provided to employees, and there is a dispute as to whether it should have been included as part of an employee’s wages for purposes of calculating the regular rate of pay. Class actions also involve other wage and hour issues, ranging from whether employees were provided with meal and rest breaks as required by law, or were misclassified as exempt when they should have been non-exempt.
My administrative agency charges are a hybrid of a compliance action and litigation. In these types of cases, either an employee has gone to an agency and filed a charge (such as an employee complaining that she was wrongfully terminated or not paid all wages); or the agency has initiated such a charge on its own because it believes the employer is not fulfilling its obligations. As an example of the latter, the IRS or EDD can initiate an investigation or bring a charge claiming that an employer has misclassified certain workers as independent contractors (instead of employees) and has failed to pay appropriate taxes for such workers. In representing a client before an administrative agency such as the EEOC (or the DFEH, which is the California equivalent) or the IRS, there are challenges not present in litigation between private parties, such as (1) whether the agency has authority for the full scope of its action or is overreaching and (2) whether and how to oppose requests that we believe are overreaching. These cases become a challenge of working with the agencies to the extent possible, preparing position statements and evidence to reflect the client’s position, and trying to curtail overreaching by the agency.
How did you choose this practice area?
I started my career knowing I wanted to do litigation but not knowing exactly what. So I started at a firm that did general litigation, which allowed me to do a little of everything, from business and commercial litigation, to real estate litigation, personal injury/products liability, general torts, and employment law. I did that for about two years, but found I was drawn to employment matters, as they were by far more interesting and appealing. So I then decided to focus, and searched for a position that would allow me to do so.
What is a typical day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
At this point in my career, there are no “typical” days. But days usually include some mix of the three aspects of my practice. Each day will involve reviewing and revising some litigation-based documents (such as motions and supporting papers), taking or defending depositions, attending court hearings, and the like. But they will also involve calls from clients who need advice on various issues, often unexpected, and/or preparation of policies or documents for a specific situation they are facing. My days also include the “business” side of working as a partner in a law firm, such as dealing with administrative issues for clients (like questions about their bills) and managing my team of associates.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
Students should take advantage of general courses involving litigation, such as Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Remedies, as these issues come up on a daily basis for any litigator, including an employment litigator. Specialized classes in employment and labor are also very helpful, as are intern or clerk opportunities with the courts or administrative agencies (such as the EEOC, DFEH, DLSE, or NLRB). Other experiences that will help develop litigation skills are moot court or workplace-based clinics. Junior associates interested in labor or employment should consider getting specific labor or employment experience at a law firm, to develop not just their litigation skill set but also specialized knowledge in this field.
What do you like best about your practice area?
What I like most about my practice area is that some employment work (such as single plaintiff cases) heavily involves a “human element” which makes the work not only intellectually stimulating, but also emotionally interesting; while other employment work (class actions) offers more analytical and technical work, which is much more mentally challenging.
What is unique about your practice area at your firm?
One of the most unique things about employment law is the range of work available within a single practice group. If they want, practitioners within employment law can be a jack of all trades—i.e., be a litigator, a counselor, and a transactional lawyer; or, if they want, they can not only specialize in one broad category (e.g., just be a litigator) but also subspecialize within that (e.g., wage and hour class actions). This provides a lot of opportunity for practitioners to develop the kind of practice they want.
How do you see this practice area evolving in the future?
This practice continually evolves because labor and employment laws are constantly changing, especially in a state like California, where such changes occur yearly (or even more frequently), whether by action of the legislature or the courts. While the core of the practice (which incorporates and accounts for constant change) will not likely change significantly in the near future, specific aspects and practices will change, especially as firms adopt technologies to cover some of the work currently being performed by junior associates.
What kinds of experience can summer associates gain at this practice area at your firm?
Summer associates can count on experience with real work needed by clients, and exposure to the type of work that our associates and partners perform, including: research and writing (either for advice and counsel purposes, as part of a brief being written, or something else); reviewing documents or conducting other fact investigation, including witness interviews; drafting and responding to discovery requests; preparing objections to evidence offered by the opposing side in litigation; attending hearings, depositions, and mediations, to observe what these procedures look like; sitting in on strategy sessions for cases, to understand how short- and long-term decisions are made; and attending trainings available to labor and employment associates at the firm.