Berman North LLP

Palo Alto & San Francisco

Employment Law

Launched as a high-tech, streamlined, fully cloud-based boutique in 2018 by Stacy Y. North and Scott A. Berman, a pair of experienced employment lawyers, an original goal was efficiency. That came in handy -- and made them look prescient -- when the pandemic struck, leaving Berman North LLP ideally positioned as remote work became the norm.

The firm focuses on whistleblower retaliation, wrongful termination, wage and hour, misclassification, Equal Pay Act violation cases and PAGA matters. Both Berman and North were named Daily Journal Top Labor & Employment Lawyers for 2023.

North and Berman run a far-flung five-attorney virtual shop, with one lawyer working from Oregon, North from her home office in Woodside, Berman from his in San Francisco and the others from elsewhere around the Bay Area. They maintain minimal office space for depositions and occasional face-to-face client meetings.

"It's worked out even better than I'd hoped," said North, who spent a dozen years at Pierce & Shearer LLP, where Berman was a mentor. "We eliminate unnecessary stuff, like a lot of office space and paper. I rarely use my printer anymore."

"The chief challenge is when we have a trial coming up," Berman said. "It's been a learning curve to coordinate our teams online. Still, the second biggest expense of running a law firm is office space, after employee compensation. So we take that out. And everyone but myself here has young kids, so our setup allows a lot more flexibility."

Managing the business side is aided by North's experience with her husband's work. "He's an entrepreneur, and I was involved with his first startup, so I got a bit of course in business management there," she said.

And a lot of their tech clients are comfortable with remote meetings. "Mostly, we elect to meet by Zoom," North said. "I have close relations with clients I've never met in person."

Berman and North are guarded about client identities and cases. North recently obtained a settlement she declined to describe in a pre-litigation mediation on behalf of a senior executive claiming whistleblower retaliation by the large pharmaceutical company where he'd worked. "This worked very well," she said. "We felt very strongly about this case and we were prepared to take it to trial. The facts were very much on our side."

Layoffs in the tech industry supply a steady flow of clients. "I've had three cases come in in the past month where CEOs were removed by boards and investors," Berman said. "VC firms are under a lot of pressure these days. These cases can be really intense -- these are founders who are devastated to be terminated out of the blue."

In a procedurally complex matter, Berman represented a local business in a contract dispute with a national company. The case went from arbitration to state court to federal court and back to arbitration, where the defendant's summary judgment motion was denied, leading to a settlement in his client's favor.

"That one shows our perseverance," Berman said. "We followed the case wherever it led."

--John Roemer