Earlier this month I presented a program for the Beverly Hills Bar Association titled “Defending Businesses to Minimize Litigation Exposure.” The material was built around the questions I get from business owners and HR teams every week: where is the liability actually coming from in 2026, what quietly creates it, and what can an employer
Every wage and hour case that comes into our office starts the same way. Before we talk strategy and long before mediation, we ask the client for one thing: the raw time and payroll data. Not a summary. The punch-level time records, the payroll register with every pay code, and the wage statements. That data
Scaled Comp’s August Settlement Pulse recorded about 225 California PAGA and wage-and-hour settlements totaling $157.4 million. The medians tell you where the market sat. They don’t tell you why one employer paid six times what another did for nearly the same number of pay periods, what a $6.5 million fund is actually buying, or whether
Getting served with a wage and hour class action or PAGA lawsuit is one of the worst days a California business owner or executive can have. The complaint typically alleges nearly every wage and hour violation in the Labor Code, claims to be brought on behalf of every employee you have had over the last
This week Anne McWilliams and I presented our masterclass on the mid-year PAGA and class action update for California employers, and I want to share some of the data we covered because it surprised even me. When the Legislature reformed PAGA in June 2024, many of us expected the volume and value of these cases
Most California employers think about their time and attendance records in only one context: the day a plaintiff’s lawyer subpoenas them. By then, the records are working against you — every late meal punch, every missing premium, every off-the-clock minute becomes a line item in someone else’s damages model. But the same data that creates
For decades, the law firm business model operated on a familiar premise: a broad base of junior lawyers, a small group of partners at the top, and clients footing the bill for hours billed at every level of the pyramid. That model — the associate leverage model — is now under significant structural pressure, and
This past week’s Zaller Law Group masterclass on AI in the Workplace walked California employers through what they need to know right now about AI in the workplace. The conversation covered everything from a federal court ruling on AI and attorney-client privilege to California’s new automated hiring regulations to practical tools employers can start using
After more than twenty years defending California employers, I have seen a consistent pattern: even companies with sophisticated systems struggle with one of the most fundamental compliance obligations in California employment law—maintaining, accessing, and analyzing employee time records. These challenges are not merely operational inconveniences. They routinely lead to unnecessary legal exposure, inflated PAGA penalties