Julia C. Riechert

Julia is an employment law expert and trial lawyer. She helps companies navigate and resolve challenging workplace issues and has extensive expertise 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 AB-5 and the ABC test. 
• 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 has represented many tech and retail clients, including Lyft, SpaceX, PayPal, GitHub, Splunk, TaskRabbit, Unity Technologies and Williams-Sonoma, Inc. 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 and 2019 by Law360 and The Recorder has named Orrick the "Litigation Department of the Year: Labor and Employment" in California four times. 

Julia is also the Office Leader of the Orrick Silicon Valley office, loves animal rescue and drinks lots of coffee.