Kayvan Iradjpanah

Kayvan Iradjpanah advises, represents and trains employers in various areas of employment law, including:

• Multi-jurisdictional employment law compliance
• Independent contractor analysis
• Class action/PAGA litigation prevention and defense
• Wage and hour disputes, compliance, and audits
• Wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation complaints/investigations
• Employee handbooks and personnel policies

As co-chair of Littler’s Emerging Companies and Venture Capital Industry Group, Kayvan advises dozens of technology and emerging growth companies. He leads manager trainings, counsels on workplace investigations, drafts employment agreements, prepares handbooks, and advises on day-to-day human resources decisions. He also is a strategic partner to accelerators, venture capital groups, private equity firms, incubators and angel investors as they advise their portfolio startup companies on how to scale in a legally compliant manner. Relatedly, Kayvan is one of the founding architects of Littler X-celerator, the firm’s onboarding tool for tech startups, and advises numerous companies in the “gig economy” on their independent contractor models.

More generally, from his dual practice in Southern and Northern California, Kayvan also serves as primary outside employment counsel for several global and national employers, providing integrated multi-jurisdictional employment law advice. In addition to technology companies, Kayvan’s clients include employers in the robotics, consulting, financial services, publishing, retail, dining, education, transportation, healthcare, automotive, staffing, and logistics industries, as well as foreign sovereign employers.

Kayvan’s litigation practice primarily focuses on defense of wage and hour claims, contractual disputes, wrongful termination/harassment/retaliation lawsuits, class actions, and representative actions under the California Private Attorneys General Act. Kayvan has successfully opposed motions for class certification, obtained favorable outcomes in arbitrations and prevailed on dispositive motions. Kayvan regularly appears in state, federal and appellate courts, as well as before arbitrators and administrative agencies like the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.

Kayvan has dedicated his entire legal career to employment law. Prior to joining Littler, Kayvan served as a judicial extern to the Hon. Steven B. Berlin in the Office of Administrative Law Judges at the Department of Labor. He also worked at the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, both in its legal department and with the Hon. Daniel E. Leach in its division of administrative judges. Previously, he worked as a counselor at the Legal Aid Society–Employment Law Center in San Francisco. In law school, he served on the board of the Employment and Labor Law Student Association.