Lawrance A. Bohm 

Lawrance A. Bohm, the founder and president of Bohm Law Group, Inc., opened the doors in 2005 to handle plaintiff-side employment discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation and whistleblower cases. By 2014, he’d won what are believed to be the two largest single-plaintiff employment cases in U.S. history, with verdicts of $186 million for a pregnancy discrimination plaintiff and $167 million for a victim of sexual harassment on the job.

“Far as I know, those still stand as records,” said Bohm, whose firm has grown to 12 lawyers with offices in Sacramento, Stockton, Los Angeles and San Diego. Over the past two years, he has obtained 13 settlements of $500,000 or more each.

Bohm worked for defense firms at the beginning of his career. He switched to his current approach, he said, “due to the glaringly obvious need for better representation for plaintiffs.” The structural imbalance struck him as unfair. “Corporate America has fostered a brain drain by hiring the best out of law schools as associates at high salaries. Very few plaintiff firms can compete. It takes energy and luck to make it on the plaintiff side and then a lot more energy to sustain it. I thought I could confidently fulfill a need.”

In mid-July, Bohm was preparing for a trial on behalf of a physician and professor at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center who alleges he was ordered not to hire foreign doctors for a fellowship program and subjected to racist comments by a superior. When he complained, whistleblower retaliation followed. Jang v. County of Los Angeles et al., BC587400 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed July 7, 2015).

Bohm often sues public entities. In 2021, he and co-counsel obtained an $800,000 jury award plus $1.3 million in legal fees for a Los Angeles County librarian who reported harassment and bullying by co-workers, only to be transferred to a distant job site in retaliation. Rodger v. L.A. County et al., BC697083 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Mar. 8, 2018).

The county’s initial offer was $15,000. Bohm said that was typical of the way public entities handle lawsuits. “Private corporations protect their backsides. These public entity defendants can’t get out of their own way. Here, even their HR person admitted in a depo and on the stand that our client wouldn’t have been transferred if she hadn’t complained. Boom. Public entities will try cases that no reasonable defendant would ever try.”

— John Roemer