COVID-19 Reset: A Conversation About Navigating the New Market for Tech Companies

Julia C. Riechert Partner

Silicon Valley

Julia is an employment law authority and trial lawyer. She 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, Instacart, Splunk, TaskRabbit, Beyond Meat, Unity Technologies, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., Dropbox and Airbnb. 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.

Lisa Lupion Partner

New York

She begins by gathering an in-depth understanding of her client’s business and goals, and then evaluating the specific issue at hand, so that whether navigating a counseling issue or a complex litigation, she can understand every possible angle and design the best possible solution.

Lisa regularly litigates a broad range of employment issues in court, administrative agencies, and arbitration. Lisa also helps companies at all stages of development avoid litigation, or prevent a single-plaintiff matter from escalating to a class action. She has successfully handled a number of high-stakes arbitrations and internal investigations. In addition, she offers counseling on discrimination, harassment, equal pay, wage and hour issues, disability accommodations, termination and compensation.  Lisa regularly advises clients on a variety of employment-related issues, including human resources policies and procedures, offer letters, severance agreements and employee termination. 

Prior to joining Orrick, Lisa served as a law clerk to the Hon. Peter Leisure in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. 

Annette Hurst Partner

San Francisco

Annette is an experienced trial lawyer who has tried copyright, trade secret, trademark, patent and business tort claims. As a risk analyst and problem solver with deep proficiency in the software industry, Annette is a go-to counselor and speaker regarding the legal issues surrounding access and use of datasets in the development of machine learning algorithms. She was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for her work as co-lead counsel on the Mattel/MGA case. Chambers USA ranks her in Band 1 for Trademark, Copyright & Trade Secrets, with clients reporting that she is “smart, creative and terrific at oral argument” and “a very well-known authority in copyright law, a great advocate and a great trial lawyer.” Chambers reports: “Clients agree that Annette Hurst is ‘a very powerful and experienced trial lawyer for copyright cases, and a good team leader who is reliable before judges,” and “Peers consider Annette Hurst a ‘remarkably intuitive’ lawyer who ‘brings unique perspectives to soft IP cases.” Since 2018, The Legal 500 has recognized Annette as a “Leading Lawyer” in copyright law, and she was named “Female Litigator of the Year West” by Benchmark Litigation in 2013. Annette has been repeatedly named one of the top 75 IP litigators in California by The Daily Journal.

Annette’s community and professional activities include past service on the Northern District of California Patent Local Rules Committee, President of the Lafayette Elementary School PTA, and past membership on the Board of Directors of the Volunteer Legal Services Program and Board of Directors of the Bar Association of San Francisco for which she was chair of the Finance and Investments Committee. She also is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco and the Board of Governors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, Northern California Chapter, as well as a past president of the Barristers Club.

Gregory Heibel Partner

Silicon Valley

Greg's practice focuses on the formation, financing and strategic guidance of rapidly growing technology companies, the representation of venture capital firms and other investors in private and public offerings, as well as other complex transactions related to high growth companies.

Greg has completed many hundreds of financings, mergers, acquisitions and intellectual property transactions for young companies in the networking, wireless, Internet, software, life sciences and consumer sectors. He regularly advises some of the largest technology companies in the world, including a Fortune 10 technology leader, in their global strategic investments into innovative startups. Additionally, Greg has represented numerous publicly traded companies in their public offering, mergers and acquisitions and ongoing corporate governance needs, including Life360 (ASX:360), Foundry Networks, Virage Networks, Adeza, Laserscope, Intellisync and Preview Systems.

Greg also was an Assistant Investment Manager for Genevest, a venture capital firm based in Geneva, Switzerland, where he participated in the first organizational meeting of the European Union World Wide Web Consortium. Prior to practicing law, Greg worked with a number of venture capital backed technology companies in operational and advisory roles, including Intellimeter, eT Communications and Metering Technology Corporation.