Joon Hwang

Joon Hwang represents employers in all aspects of labor and employment law. He has successfully defended clients in scores of complex, high profile individual, class, and collective actions; countless mediations and arbitration proceedings; and achieved exceptional outcomes in state, federal, and appellate courts as well as administrative agencies. A highly recognized and skilled litigator, Joon understands his clients' business objectives, and his pre-litigation and litigation strategies are designed to efficiently meet clients' business goals and minimize risks. Joon's practice resides in the Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland region, but he has represented international, national, and regional clients across the country, including New York and California.  

Joon’s nationwide practice includes:

• Employment discrimination, harassment, and retaliation
• Whistleblower and retaliation investigations and litigation
• Executive contracts and compensation
• Noncompetition, nonsolicitation, and nondisclosure negotiation and litigation
• Business torts, including defamation, breach of fiduciary duties, duties of loyalty, tortious interference, conspiracy, and other business competition issues
• Equal pay audits and litigation
• Independent contractor and contingent worker audits and litigation
• Wage and hour, including defense of allegations of employee misclassification, off-the-clock work, meal and rest break violations, and compensable preliminary and postliminary activities
• Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) claims under California law

Joon works with a diverse range of clients in industries such as government contracting, consulting, technology, health care, transportation, construction, telecommunications, retail, insurance, staffing, higher education, and professional sports. His clients also include U.S. subsidiaries of multinational Korean conglomerates as well as emerging growth companies, start-ups, and entrepreneurs.

Joon is the Virginia liaison for Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute (WPI), which partners with employers to engage in legislative and regulatory advocacy efforts on issues that impact the workplace. Joon focuses on Virginia state legislative and regulatory developments in employment and labor law, as well as municipal ordinances and regulation of the workplace. He assists the employer community in understanding and impacting Virginia legislation before it becomes law. Joon has been published in a variety of publications, including Bloomberg Law and Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and routinely speaks on employment-related issues to businesses and human resource groups.

From 2016-2019, Joon served on Littler’s Diversity and Inclusion Council responsible for creating, implementing, and reviewing firmwide diversity and inclusion strategies, including enhancing the firm’s recruitment and retention of diverse attorneys, and creating pipelines in which lawyers from diverse backgrounds are promoted within the firm’s management and leadership tracks. He has also devoted substantial time to the success of Littler’s award-winning Career Advocacy Program (CAP), a signature diversity and inclusion initiative of the firm. Currently, Joon serves as the co-chair of the Littler SOAR Program, which mentors newly hired diverse attorneys to excel professionally at the firm. 

Previously, Joon was a judicial clerk to the Honorable James C. Fox of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.