Employment Litigator Melinda Riechert Joins Orrick

• Melinda Riechert, one of the nation’s elite labor and employment defense lawyers, joins Orrick’s employment practice as a partner in our Silicon Valley office.
• Melinda has a distinguished record of jury and bench trial wins, as well as dispositive summary judgment motions and successful arbitration awards. She acts for many Orrick clients, including Pinterest, Juniper Networks, Hitachi and Maxar, among others.
• Melinda unites at Orrick with her daughters, Julia Riechert, a partner in our employment practice, and Talent Counsel Allison Riechert Giese. She joins from Morgan Lewis.

“I have long tried to recruit Melinda and am thrilled to practice with her,” said Orrick Board member Lynne Hermle. “She joins our team at a time when our docket and our clients’ need for employment counsel are on fire. She is a distinguished leader of the employment bar, with a strong track record of trial wins, and will be an extraordinary mentor to the next generation of rising stars at Orrick.” 

“I am thrilled to join my friends and daughters at Orrick and to work together to serve our extraordinary clients,” Melinda said. “It is the opportunity of my career.”

Melinda defends companies, particularly in the tech and life sciences sector, in a wide range of employment matters, including discrimination and wage and hour class actions, wrongful termination, retaliation, harassment and other complex workplace disputes. She is a fellow in The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and has been named by Chambers USA as one of the nation’s leading employment lawyers since 2007.

Melinda joins an Orrick employment practice that has been named a Law360 Practice Group of the Year five times and earned American Lawyer Litigator of the Week honors for winning high-profile cases for clients such as Oracle, Microsoft, Twitter, SpaceX and Kleiner Perkins.