Jennifer L. Liu 

At least once a week, someone comes to Jennifer L. Liu’s office to ask her for advice about how to handle a difficult situation with an employer. Often, they are women executives near the top of their companies in Silicon Valley who are upset about a problem with higher-ups.

They may be “trying to navigate a situation where they have been very successful, but the playing field is not really even,” Liu said. “It’s such a sad situation because there’s so much to lose … and yet they don’t want to pretend that there’s not a problem that impacts women.”

Liu advises them on how to take the best next step, be it a polite email or a letter of resignation. Then she goes further.

“I will ghostwrite their email sometimes,” she said. “Or if they have an important call with a [senior executive] … I might go over talking points with them and roleplay how to handle themselves in the conversation.”

“It’s almost like executive coaching,” she continued.

The kind of advice she gives depends on the client’s goals. Someone “who is just done with the company” gets very different advice from someone who wants to stay even after being egregiously sexually harassed by the CEO.

“My job as an attorney is to advise people in a way that is practical, that gets them to their result, even if it means [not raising] a very serious problem of discrimination in the workplace,” Liu said. “And sometimes we do raise the issue, but in a very, very careful way,” perhaps by finding another manager or colleague to raise the issue instead.

For other clients, she writes or reviews employment agreements and severance packages.

Most of Liu’s work is litigation, although she rarely identifies cases or clients.

Last year, she settled a national class action over wage-and-hour practices in the hospitality industry, as well as a similar statewide PAGA action. Liu said she believes the cases can help improve working conditions for people in the field.

Employees in hospitality, particularly those working in resorts or other glamorous vacation spots, are more vulnerable because they may tolerate poor conditions or treatment “in order to have the fun job,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be paid according to the law.”

Currently, she is representing at least two high-ranking HR executives who were hired “with a mandate to build a more inclusive and diverse workplace,” she said. “Then when the appetite for those initiatives dried up, they were retaliated against for trying to continue to do their jobs.”

Liu has some advantages in representing senior executives. Before law school, she worked for a few years as a financial analyst for a large investment firm. She earned her law degree in a special program at Stanford, in which she also earned an MBA.

— Don DeBenedictis