Julia C. Riechert

Julia helps companies navigate and resolve challenging workplace issues and has extensive experience in:

• Litigating and defeating harassment, discrimination, equal pay, disability and retaliation claims, including #MeToo and whistleblower allegations.
• Successfully resolving pre-litigation disputes and employment claims.
• The gig economy, independent contractor classification and agency temps, including the ABC test and California's Prop 22. 
• Wage & hour class and PAGA actions, including defeating class certification for technology and retail companies.
• Arbitration agreements, employment policies, anti-harassment training and workplace compliance best practices.
• Defending companies against government charges and audits, including unemployment insurance matters.
• Employee complaints, workplace investigations, layoffs and employment terminations.
• Providing advice and counsel on a wide variety of employment issues for small, medium and large companies.

Julia's clients include Lyft, PayPal, Airbnb, Instacart, Visa, Cisco, TaskRabbit, Beyond Meat, Unity Technologies, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., Dropbox and Gensler. Julia and her Orrick partner Lynne Hermle won the 2017 California Lawyer of the Year award in Labor and Employment from California Lawyer for their defense verdict for SpaceX in a high profile sex harassment, discrimination, retaliation and disability case. The Daily Journal also named their two jury trial wins for SpaceX as top verdicts in 2016 and 2017, both affirmed on appeal. Orrick was named Employment Group of the Year in 2018, 2019 and 2020 by Law360 and The Recorder has named Orrick the "Litigation Department of the Year: Labor and Employment" in California four times.

Side note: Julia also loves animal rescue and drinks lots of coffee.