Employment Lawyers for Employees: Why the Side a Firm Takes Changes Your Case

An employment lawyer for employees represents workers against employers, and takes no employer-side work that would put them on the other side of a case like yours. California records this nowhere. No State Bar registry, certificate or license field carries the answer, so you have to establish it yourself before you hand over your story. This page shows you how to check, and why it changes who can take your case and how much of your story gets heard.

At a glance

• Side is not a legal designation. No California statute, State Bar rule or registry records whether a firm acts for employees or employers. You have to check.
• A firm may lawfully act for both. Nothing forbids the mix. The consequence is arithmetic: the more employers a firm represents, the longer the list of companies it cannot sue.
• One conflict spreads to the whole firm. Rule 1.10(a) of the California Rules of Professional Conduct attributes one lawyer's conflict to every lawyer in the building.
• A firm with employer clients has a rule-driven reason to hear less of your story. Rule 1.18(d)(2) protects its ability to act for the other side only if the lawyer avoided hearing more than was necessary.
• The legal fees run one way, by statute. Government Code section 12965(c)(6) lets a winning employee recover legal fees from the employer. A winning employer recovers only if the court finds the case was frivolous, unreasonable or groundless.
• "No fee unless we win" covers the attorney's fee only. Case costs are a separate question, and they run in two directions. Your own agreement decides who carries the costs your firm advanced, and section 6147(a)(2) requires it to spell out how costs affect your recovery. What the employer can recover from you is set by statute: Code of Civil Procedure section 1032(b) gives the winning side its court costs as a matter of right unless another statute says otherwise. California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act says otherwise. A claim outside that Act does not.
• The shortest clock is not the famous one. People hear "three years" and relax. The federal deadline can be 300 days, and an oral contract runs out in two years.

What people assume, and what California law says

Does it matter whether a firm represents employees or employers?

Both kinds of firm practice the same law. What differs is who pays them, and that decides who they are free to sue and how much of your story they can afford to hear.

That last row is the one that matters. It is not a slur on anyone's ethics. It is the mechanical result of a rule, and the rest of this page explains it.

Can one California firm represent both employees and employers?

Yes. Nothing in California law stops a firm from keeping employee clients and employer clients at the same time. The mix is lawful. What it changes is reach, and the rules below explain how.

What the rules restrict is adversity.

Rule 1.7(a) says a lawyer must not, without informed written consent from each client, "represent a client if the representation is directly adverse to another client in the same or a separate matter." Read the last four words again. The two matters do not have to be related. A firm that defends your employer in a contract dispute has a conflict if it then sues that employer for you.

Rule 1.7(b) reaches the softer version: a lawyer must not act where "there is a significant risk the lawyer's representation of the client will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to or relationships with another client, a former client or a third person, or by the lawyer's own interests."

Consent can clear some of this, but not all of it. Rule 1.7(d)(3) is a flat bar, and no amount of agreement opens it: the representation must not "involve the assertion of a claim by one client against another client represented by the lawyer in the same litigation or other proceeding before a tribunal." One firm cannot run both sides of your case, whatever anyone signs.

And "informed written consent" is a defined term with teeth. Under Rule 1.0.1(e) the lawyer must have "communicated and explained (i) the relevant circumstances and (ii) the material risks, including any actual and reasonably foreseeable adverse consequences," and Rule 1.0.1(e-1) requires both the explanation and the agreement to be in writing. Somebody mentioning it on the phone is not consent.

The duty also survives the relationship. Rule 1.9(a) bars a lawyer from acting against a former client "in the same or a substantially related matter" without that former client's informed written consent. Substantially related does not mean identical. It means close enough that what the lawyer learned the first time could be used against that client the second time.

So the honest answer is not that a mixed firm is unethical. It is that a mixed firm has a larger set of people it is not allowed to sue, and your employer may be on that list.

One lawyer's conflict belongs to the whole firm

This is the part that surprises people. Rule 1.10(a) provides that "while lawyers are associated in a firm, none of them shall knowingly represent a client when any one of them practicing alone would be prohibited from doing so by rules 1.7 or 1.9."

A partner three floors up, on a different practice team, who has never heard your employer's name spoken aloud in your matter, can still disqualify the firm from taking your case.

There is a narrow exception for a lawyer who arrives from another firm. Rule 1.10(a)(2) allows the firm to keep the matter if the arriving lawyer did not substantially participate in it, is "timely screened from any participation in the matter and is apportioned no part of the fee therefrom," and written notice goes out describing the screening procedures.

Notice who gets that notice. It runs to the affected former client, not to you. Nothing in Rule 1.10 gives you the right to be told a screen is running around your own case. If you want to know, you have to ask.

Why would a law firm not want to hear your whole story?

Because in California, listening to you costs a firm something, and the more employer clients it has, the more listening costs.

Here is the chain. Rule 1.18(a) makes you a prospective client from the moment you call a lawyer about hiring them, before any money changes hands. Rule 1.18(b) then binds that lawyer not to use or repeat what you said "even when no lawyer-client relationship ensues." Your free consultation is protected whether or not you hire anyone.

Rule 1.18(c) turns that protection into a bar. Once a lawyer has heard material confidential information from you, that lawyer cannot later act against you in the same dispute or a closely connected one, and neither can anyone else at their firm.

Rule 1.18(d)(2) is where it bites. Short of getting your own written consent, a firm keeps the right to act for the other side only if the lawyer "took reasonable measures to avoid exposure to more information than was reasonably necessary to determine whether to represent the prospective client," screens that lawyer off the matter, and writes to tell you. Put plainly: the less of your story a firm hears, the freer it stays to defend your employer later.

So a firm with employer clients has something to lose by letting you talk. A firm that acts only for employees does not.

It can show up on the call itself. A consultation that stays at headline level, steers away from names and documents, or closes before you have finished. That is not rudeness, and it is not misconduct. It is a rule working exactly as written. But a lawyer who hears a trimmed version of your situation is assessing a trimmed version of your case.

If a call ends before you have said the things that worry you most, that is worth asking about directly, and the list below starts with the question to ask.

The side a firm takes changes how much of your story it is free to let you tell.

How does the side change the way you are billed?

An employer pays its lawyers by the hour, as the case runs. You almost certainly cannot. The reason an employee can hire a serious firm anyway is written into the statutes.

Under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, Government Code section 12965(c)(6) lets a court award the prevailing party reasonable attorney's fees and costs, including expert witness fees, "except that, notwithstanding Section 998 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a prevailing defendant shall not be awarded fees and costs unless the court finds the action was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless when brought, or the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so." That standard was codified by SB 1300 in 2018.

Two further wage statutes point the same way:

That imbalance is why you can hire a serious firm with nothing in the bank: a win can be paid for by the employer. Nothing in these statutes does the reverse to you for losing an ordinary, good-faith case.

That is a standard rather than a shield. An employee who brings a groundless or bad-faith case can still be ordered to pay the other side.

Ready to talk it through? The first consultation is free, and you can book one here. If the document in front of you is a severance agreement, the cost of having a lawyer review it is its own question, answered separately.

What does "no fee unless we win" actually cover?

It covers the attorney's fee. It does not automatically cover case costs, and those are real money: filing fees, deposition transcripts, court reporters, expert witnesses.

Two different questions hide inside the word costs, and only one of them is answered by your contract.

The first is what happens to the costs your own firm advanced. No California statute allocates those between lawyer and client on a loss. That is a term of your individual agreement, which is why section 6147(a)(2) requires the agreement to spell it out.

The second is what you may owe the employer. That one is answered by statute. Code of Civil Procedure section 1032(b) provides that "except as otherwise expressly provided by statute, a prevailing party is entitled as a matter of right to recover costs in any action or proceeding," and Code of Civil Procedure section 1033.5 makes filing fees, deposition transcripts and court reporter fees recoverable items. FEHA is one of the statutes that expressly provides otherwise. Section 12965(c)(6) makes any award to a winning employer discretionary and conditions it on a finding of frivolousness, and in Williams v. Chino Valley Independent Fire District (2015) the Supreme Court of California held that this covers ordinary costs and not just attorney's fees: a prevailing defendant "should not be awarded fees and costs unless the court finds the action was objectively without foundation when brought, or the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so."

Claims outside FEHA carry no such protection. A wrongful termination claim in breach of public policy, a claim on an oral promise and an unfair competition claim are ordinary civil actions, so an employer that wins one recovers its court costs without any finding that your case was frivolous. Code of Civil Procedure section 998 adds a second route: turn down a formal settlement offer, fail to beat it at trial, and you pay the employer's costs from the date of that offer, and the court may add its expert witness fees on top. Section 12965(c)(6) switches section 998 off inside FEHA. It does not switch it off anywhere else.

Ask which claims your case will actually plead, and what the cost exposure is on each one.

What the law does require is disclosure. Business and Professions Code section 6147 says a contingency agreement must be in writing, that you get a duplicate copy signed by both of you at the time it is entered into, and that it contains five specific things. Two of them are about money leaving your pocket:

• Section 6147(a)(2) requires "a statement as to how disbursements and costs incurred in connection with the prosecution or settlement of the claim will affect the contingency fee" and your recovery.
• Section 6147(a)(3) requires a statement of the extent to which you could be asked to pay for related matters the contingency contract does not cover.

A third is worth knowing before you sign anything. Section 6147(a)(4) requires the agreement to state that the fee "is not set by law but is negotiable between attorney and client." Most people do not know the rate is a conversation.

If the firm gets this wrong, section 6147(b) makes the agreement voidable at your option, and the lawyer is then entitled to a reasonable fee. It does not mean they worked for nothing.

For hourly work the threshold is lower than people expect. Section 6148 requires a written agreement wherever it is reasonably foreseeable that total expense to the client, including attorney fees, will exceed one thousand dollars. The State Bar puts the same rule in plainer words: fee agreements "must be in writing when the lawyer anticipates fees and costs for your case to total $1,000 or more."

Section 6148(d)(4) removes the written-agreement requirement entirely where the client is a corporation. That protection was written for consumers, and the employer across the table does not get it.

What should you ask before you hire?

Ten questions. Each one tests something a rule makes real, and each has a wrong answer worth walking away from.

1. Do you ever represent employers, in any matter? A direct yes or no, and if yes, what share of the practice. "We focus on employees" is not an answer, because a focus is not an exclusion.
2. Have you run a conflict check against my employer and its parent company, and when? A firm is expected to have a system for this. Rule 5.1(a) requires its managing lawyers to make reasonable efforts to ensure the firm has measures giving reasonable assurance that everyone in it complies with the rules, and the rule's first Comment names procedures "to detect and resolve conflicts of interest" as an example of what that means. A firm that cannot tell you whether it ran one, or when, is telling you something. Rule 1.10 spreads any hit across the whole firm.
3. If a conflict turns up later, what happens to what I told you today? They should explain that confidentiality survives the call whatever happens next. "Nothing, we never took you on" is wrong.
4. Are you a member of the California Employment Lawyers Association, and at which tier? Regular membership is the most checkable side-signal in the state. See the next section for why.
5. Is anyone at the firm a certified legal specialist, and in what? The correct answer is that California has no employment-law specialty. Any claim to be a certified employment-law specialist cannot be supported.
6. Show me the clause about costs if we lose. They should turn to the section 6147(a)(2) statement and read it out. "Don't worry about costs" is not that.
7. Is the contingency rate negotiable? The agreement is required to say it is. An answer of "that is our standard rate," full stop, is at odds with the document they are about to hand you.
8. Will I get a signed duplicate of the agreement when I sign it? Yes, at the time it is entered into. Not "we'll send it over."
9. What are my deadlines, counted from what date? You want specific dates, the federal filing point, and an acknowledgment that some clocks can be paused and that it has to be worked out from your file. "You have three years" is a warning sign.
10. Who actually handles my file, and will they still be here at trial? A name. A lawyer moving firms can create a fresh conflict problem, and the screen that follows under Rule 1.10 is notified to the affected former client rather than to you. The one screen you are entitled to hear about in writing is the one a firm builds around your own consultation, under Rule 1.18(d)(2).

Once you have chosen, the shape of the months ahead is fairly predictable. We set it out step by step in what happens after you contact an employment lawyer.

How can you check which side a firm is really on?

Ranked by what each source actually proves.

Court records are less open than that row suggests. Federal dockets sit behind PACER, which charges $0.10 a page, capped at $3 a document, and bills you only once you pass $30 in a quarter. Most California employment cases are filed in state court, where access rules and fees vary by court.

There is a common trap sitting next to that list. Membership in the Labor and Employment Law Section of the California Lawyers Association signals nothing about side, because both sides belong to it. CELA names the management-side bodies its own members may not join, which is precisely why its membership test means something.

How long do you have to file in California?

Long enough to choose well. Not long enough to drift.

Three things that quietly change those numbers.

The intake form is what stops the clock. The verified complaint can follow. Section 12960(b) provides that "filing a complaint means filing an intake form with the department and the operative date of the verified complaint relates back to the filing of the intake form."

Three years is the employment headline. It is not a universal rule. Other civil rights claims under section 12960(e)(1) keep a one-year period, and an Equal Pay Act claim takes its own statute's deadline.

And the federal clock usually runs per event. The EEOC's guidance is that where more than one discriminatory event took place, "the deadline usually applies to each event," with an exception for ongoing harassment measured from the last incident. The EEOC also warns that the time limits generally will not be extended while you try to resolve things through an internal grievance, a union process, arbitration or mediation. Weeks spent in HR, or spent choosing a firm, can run the clock out on your earliest incidents while the later ones stay in time, and the earliest are often the ones that show the pattern.

Some of these clocks can be paused. Lawyers call that tolling, and a complaint already pending with the CRD is one reason it happens. Whether any of it applies to you has to be worked out from your own dates and documents rather than from a table. Deadlines can run early, so do not calculate your own. Book a free consultation, bring the dates, and we will work them out with you. Our fuller breakdown of the time limits on California employment claims goes through them claim by claim, and how long a lawsuit itself takes covers what follows the filing.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a certified employment law specialist in California?

No. The State Bar of California certifies legal specialists in a fixed list of fields, and employment law is not among them. As of September 2026, neither the State Bar's specialist search nor its specialist examination list included employment law or labor law. A lawyer may only claim to be a certified specialist where such a certification exists, so no California employment lawyer can make that claim. A firm saying it "specializes in employment law" is doing something different and entirely permitted.

Can the same law firm represent both employees and employers in California?

Yes, as a general matter. What the firm cannot do is act directly against a current client without informed written consent, act against a former client in a substantially related matter, or represent both sides of the same case at all. Because Rule 1.10(a) attributes one lawyer's conflict to everyone in the firm, a practice with many employer clients has a correspondingly long list of companies it is barred from suing.

What is the difference between a plaintiff-side and a management-side employment lawyer?

Plaintiff-side, or employee-side, firms act for workers and are usually paid a contingency fee out of a recovery. Management-side, or employer-side, firms act for companies and bill by the hour. The law they practice is the same. The difference is who their client is, who pays them, and which companies they are free to sue.

Does it cost anything to speak to an employment lawyer for employees?

Most employee-side firms in California offer a free first consultation, but this is a market convention rather than a legal requirement. No rule requires, prohibits or prices an initial consultation. What is regulated is the consequence: under Rule 1.18(b) the lawyer owes you confidentiality about that conversation even if you never hire them.

If I lose, do I have to pay the other side's legal fees?

Fees, usually not. Costs, sometimes. Under Government Code section 12965(c)(6) a prevailing employer recovers fees and costs on a FEHA claim only if the court finds the action was frivolous, unreasonable or groundless when brought, or that you carried on after it clearly became so. Labor Code section 1194 gives an employer no fee right at all on minimum wage and overtime claims, and under Labor Code section 218.5 an employer recovers only on a finding you acted in bad faith. Claims outside those statutes are different. A wrongful termination claim in breach of public policy, a claim on an oral promise and an unfair competition claim are ordinary civil actions, and Code of Civil Procedure section 1032(b) entitles the winning party to its court costs as a matter of right. Turning down a formal settlement offer under Code of Civil Procedure section 998 and then failing to beat it shifts the employer's later costs to you as well. Ask your lawyer to price that exposure claim by claim before you file.

What does "no fee unless we win" actually mean?

It means you owe no attorney's fee unless there is a recovery. It says nothing automatic about case costs such as filing fees, deposition transcripts and expert witnesses. Your written agreement decides who carries the costs your own firm advanced, and section 6147(a)(2) requires it to spell out how costs affect your recovery. What you may owe the employer is a separate question, and that one is decided by statute: under Code of Civil Procedure section 1032(b) the winning side recovers its court costs as a matter of right unless another statute provides otherwise. FEHA provides otherwise. A claim outside FEHA does not. Ask to be shown the costs clause before you sign, and ask which of your claims sit outside FEHA.

How do I check whether a firm really only represents employees?

Ask directly, then verify. Regular membership of the California Employment Lawyers Association is the strongest public signal, because members certify that most of their practice is for employees and that they hold no more than one employer-side case. Court dockets and published appellate opinions name the lawyers for each party in a given case. The State Bar's Attorney Search confirms a license and any discipline, but has no field for which side a lawyer takes.

How quickly do I need to decide?

Faster than the three-year figure suggests. The federal charge deadline can be 300 days, a claim on an oral promise runs out in two years, and the federal clock generally applies to each incident separately. Time spent in an internal grievance usually does not extend it. You do not need to rush the decision, but you should not let it drift for months.

The Law Offices of Jonathan J. Delshad is a Los Angeles based employment law firm representing employees across California in wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation, harassment, and wage and hour matters. Representing employees is the core of the firm's practice. Mr. Delshad serves as Editor-in-Chief of the California Wrongful Termination Law Review and trained at Latham & Watkins. Recognition includes Super Lawyers (2022 to 2027), Best Lawyers (since 2017), and an Avvo 10.0 "Superb" rating. Reviewed for California employment law accuracy. Last updated: September 16, 2026.

Attorney advertising. This article is educational only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship, which exists only under a signed engagement agreement. Every case is different, and outcomes depend on the specific facts. Deadlines can run early, so consult a lawyer promptly about your situation.