Exclusively Employer-Side Employment Law Firm Celebrates One Year Advising California-based Businesses With Legal Workplace Issues
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- EmployLaw Group LLP, a law firm educating California employers and protecting them before, during and after employment disputes, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary of serving clients from Sacramento to San Diego and beyond in a wide range of industries.
One year after launching the exclusively employer-side employment law firm, co-founders Jamie N. Stein and Ryan Haws have built their practice around a simple idea: the lawyer helping an employer prevent tomorrow's lawsuit should understand what plaintiffs' lawyers are arguing in today's courtrooms.
It is a distinction that has become central to the way EmployLaw Group advises its clients.
Stein handles the firm's litigation practice, defending California employers in individual, class and representative actions. Haws leads the firm's advice-and-counsel practice, working with businesses on the employment decisions they make every day. The two practices are intentionally connected.
EmployLaw Group educates and counsels employers on employment-related matters and handles a significant number of litigation cases in industries including manufacturing, home health, agricultural, professional services, construction, nonprofits, hospitality, and aerospace. A unique attribute of the firm is its ability to draw on both real-time legal developments and real-world litigation experience when advising employers on day-to-day workplace issues, helping them adopt practices that reduce litigation risk while effectively addressing disputes that have already arisen.
This past year saw the firm add several senior and support staff positions and grow its client base to several hundred companies. Top management is looking forward to further team and client growth, expanding the business into new territories, and finding innovative ways to educate and prepare California employers on current and emerging laws that will affect them. The firm has also opened an office in Thousand Oaks, and is now looking to add associate attorneys as it continues to expand.
Stein, Partner and Co-Founder of EmployLaw Group, said, "Employment advice traditionally begins with what the law says and how courts have interpreted it. That remains essential. But there is another layer of information available to us because we are actively litigating these cases. We are seeing, in real time, the new theories, interpretations and arguments plaintiffs' attorneys are making before those issues ever become published appellate decisions."
Those arguments routinely become part of the conversation between Stein and Haws. When a novel theory surfaces in litigation, they consider not only how to defend against it in the pending case, but whether it exposes a potential vulnerability that other employers can address proactively.
That exchange between litigation and counseling reflects the firm's broader mission: educating and protecting employers before, during and after workplace disputes.
"We don't have to wait for a court to publish an opinion before asking whether there is a practical lesson our clients can take from an argument being made today," Stein said. "Not every argument will ultimately succeed. But if we can identify an emerging theory and there is a reasonable way for a client to eliminate or reduce that risk, we want our clients to have that information now."
For Haws and Stein, education is itself a form of risk management.
EmployLaw Group specializes in wage and hour (W&H) compliance reviews, which evaluate an organization's adherence to labor laws such as the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) and state regulations covering proper pay calculations (minimum wage, overtime, and break issues); day-to-day employment counseling, workplace investigations, employee classification, harassment and discrimination prevention, supervisor training, employment agreements and policies, and the defense of wrongful termination, retaliation and discrimination claims, as well as wage-and-hour, class and PAGA litigation.
Haws, Co-Founder of EmployLaw Group, said, "California employers want to comply with the law. The difficulty is that knowing the rule is not always enough. Employers also need to understand how that rule is being interpreted, challenged and used in actual claims. Our job is to give clients that context so they can make informed decisions rather than simply react after something has gone wrong."
That approach appears to be resonating.
For a law firm celebrating only its first anniversary, the growth is meaningful. But Stein and Haws say the numbers are not the part they find most important.
"We built this firm because we wanted to practice law differently," Stein said. "Ryan and I have very different day-to-day practices, but we approach them with exactly the same objective: to be extraordinarily useful to our clients. That means caring about the outcome, being accessible, understanding the client's business, and looking beyond the immediate legal question to what will actually protect them."
Haws agreed.
"Being of service is fundamental to how we practice," he said. "Our clients know us, they work with us directly, and they know they can call us before a problem becomes a crisis. We want them to understand not only what they should do, but why."
That philosophy also explains the firm's emphasis on employer education outside of individual client matters. Stein and Haws regularly speak to business and human resources audiences, including programs for the Employers Advisory Council, Professionals in Human Resources Association and National Human Resources Association, and hold leadership positions in human resources organizations.
As EmployLaw Group enters its second year, its founders expect the team and geographic reach to continue growing. They are actively seeking additional associate attorneys who share the firm's approach to client service and employer education.
But the underlying strategy is not changing.
"The best litigation lesson is the one we can use to keep another client from having the same litigation," Stein said. "Every case teaches us something. The value is making sure our clients benefit from it before they ever find themselves in a courtroom."
About EmployLaw Group LLP
EmployLaw Group LLP is an exclusively employer-side California employment law firm dedicated to educating and protecting businesses before, during and after employment disputes. The firm advises employers on day-to-day workplace matters, compliance, policies, investigations and training and defends employers in individual, class and representative litigation. EmployLaw Group serves businesses throughout California across a wide range of industries.
For more information, visit https://employlawgroup.com/.
Media Contact:
Frank Tortorici
SOURCE EmployLaw Group LLP
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