Lynne C. Hermle

Hermle, who focuses on employment law and litigation; wage and hour cases and pay equity matters, has been working from home during the Covid-19 crisis.

"I've loved having the extra time with my son, who came home for spring break from law school and stayed for remote law school classes due to Covid, and my husband, who has been working from home in his sales job," Hermle said in an email interview.

"Patience has been important because we're on top of each other in our small house (which was built in 1924 and thus has significant wi-fi challenges). If our dogs didn't hate the UPS and mail deliveries with a white hot passion, mid-day conference calls would go more smoothly, but you can't have everything."

It's hardly been a relaxing respite, however. "On the professional side, we experienced an immediate client need for information regarding the pandemic's impact on the workforce, with fast breaking and changing guidance coming from all fronts. Now that we're over that initial hurdle, litigation seems to be coming back with full steam," she said in early July. "

"In the past two weeks I've had four video mediations and taken multiple video depositions. The technology is challenging, but as we all become more comfortable we'll be able to find ways to make it work, including for arbitration and, potentially, jury trials."

Two major recent cases illustrate Hermle's successes. She secured a state court appellate-level win for Twitter Inc. and she prevailed at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Microsoft Corp. Both tested gender discrimination claims in the tech sector.

For Twitter, Hermle persuaded a 1st District Court of Appeals panel to affirm the trial court's finding that the plaintiff failed to establish a common factual predicate for the case to proceed as a class action under California law. The claims by women engineers of discrimination in Twitter's pay and promotion policies failed because the company has no uniform policy the plaintiffs could rely on, the panel held. Huang v. Twitter Inc., A155155 (1 st DCA, filed March 19, 2015).

The Microsoft case involved nearly 8,600 female engineers with similar claims. A circuit panel agreed with Hermle's argument that the Supreme Court's Walmart v. Dukes decision foreclosed class certification. Moussouris v. Microsoft Corp., 18-35791 (9th Cir., filed Sept. 16, 2015).

"The Microsoft and Twitter cases confirmed that plaintiffs must establish a strong factual basis for bringing far-reaching claims of discrimination against employers," Hermle said. "In both instances, we were able to show the courts, at the trial and appellate level, that the plaintiffs failed to make that showing. Both were examples of strong Orrick teamwork across geographies and practices, some of the best examples of collaboration I've seen in my career."

-- John Roemer