Maria C. Rodriguez

Rodriguez was initially uncertain about which area of law to focus on but that changed when a mentor told her employment law was largely about enhancing the relationship between employers and employees.

Over the years, Rodriguez discovered another draw of employment law: the close relationships she’s been able to develop with her own clients – including many that have lasted more than two decades.

These longstanding relationships have been “incredibly rewarding to an extent I could not have appreciated or measured back then,” Rodriguez said of the early days in her career. “We can benefit from each other’s wisdom and bounce ideas off one another.”

Part of the reason these relationships are longstanding is the quality of Rodriguez’s work. Consider, for example, her efforts with Circle K – a multi-national chain of convenience stores boasting 40,000 employees and 15,000 stores. Rodriguez and her team represented the company in multiple class-action lawsuits involving the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Private Attorneys General Act, yielding results that would motivate the company to assign Rodriguez another five class action cases, as well as two others.

One of these class actions, which was spearheaded by an employee challenging “extraneous provisions” in the company’s disclosure and authorization forms that would give it the authority to run background checks, was especially technical, Rodriguez said. It was also one of her favorite recent cases to work on. Limon v. Circle K Stores Inc., 1:18-cv-01689 (E.D. Cal., filed Dec. 11, 2018).

Rodriguez was skeptical of the lead plaintiff’s argument, since he had held multiple jobs in the past and should have understood the background check language he was challenging was not unusual.

“Ultimately we made an early summary judgment motion to the court and won,” she said.

In recent years, Rodriguez’s clients have also included Netflix, Little Caesars, and Verizon Wireless. And now that she’s a veteran in her field, she’s become something of a mentor herself.

“Employment work at least really gives you the opportunity to work as a team,” she said. “We’ve got a team in Los Angeles of 10 lawyers, and these are also people that

I really care about and adore and hope to… help them develop their practices.”

— Jessica Mach