Kayvan Iradjpanah

Kayvan Iradjpanah advises, represents and trains employers in various areas of employment law, including:

• Multi-jurisdictional employment law compliance
• Independent contractor analysis
• Class action/PAGA litigation prevention and defense
• Wage and hour disputes, compliance, and audits
• Wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation complaints/investigations
• Employee handbooks and personnel policies

As co-chair of Littler’s Emerging Companies and Venture Capital Industry Group, Kayvan advises dozens of  emerging growth technology companies at all stages of growth, ranging from pre-seed to late stage to IPO. Additionally, Kayvan serves as outside counsel to numerous venture capital firms on their own employment law compliance needs. Many VCs, private equity firms, accelerators, incubators, and angel investors rely on Kayvan and his team to strategically partner with their portfolio companies to build practical and business-minded compliance frameworks to position them for rapid scaling and growth.

Kayvan advises on day-to-day HR decisions, drafts employment agreements, leads manager trainings, counsels on workplace investigations, and prepares personnel policies. He advises many companies in the “gig economy” on their independent contractor models and is one of the founding architects of Littler X-celerator, the firm’s onboarding tool for tech startups.

More generally, from his dual practice in Southern and Northern California, Kayvan also serves as primary outside employment counsel for many global and national employers, providing integrated multi-jurisdictional employment law advice. In addition to technology startups and VC firms, Kayvan’s clients include employers in the AI, robotics, consulting, financial services, health care, publishing, retail, hospitality, entertainment, education, staffing, and logistics industries, as well as foreign sovereign employers like embassies and consulates.

Kayvan’s litigation practice primarily focuses on defense of wage and hour claims, contractual disputes, wrongful termination/harassment/retaliation lawsuits, class actions, and representative actions under the California Private Attorneys General Act. He has successfully opposed motions for class certification, obtained favorable outcomes in arbitrations and prevailed on dispositive motions. Kayvan appears in state, federal and appellate courts, as well as before arbitrators and administrative agencies like the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.

Kayvan has dedicated his entire legal career to employment law. Prior to joining Littler, Kayvan served as a judicial extern to the Hon. Steven B. Berlin in the Office of Administrative Law Judges at the Department of Labor. He also worked at the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, both in its legal department and with the Hon. Daniel E. Leach in its division of administrative judges. In addition to counseling at the Legal Aid Society–Employment Law Center in San Francisco, Kayvan was also on the board of the Employment and Labor Law Student Association in law school.