Lorena is an associate in the San Francisco office of Ogletree Deakins with experience handling single-plaintiff employment litigation, class action litigation, advice and counsel, and traditional labor matters.
Lorena’s class action litigation includes wage and hour claims and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. She proactively advises employers on employment matters such as leaves of absences, exempt and non-exempt employee classifications, and anti-harassment policies and practices. Lorena also defends employers in a variety of single-plaintiff litigation matters including discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Lorena also has experience conducting workplace investigations and defending employers in writ of administrative mandate proceedings before California courts. She also assists employers in securing safety in the workplace by obtaining workplace violence restraining orders in state court.
Lorena’s experience also includes representing management in all aspects of traditional labor matters, ranging from employee discipline and grievances through collective bargaining negotiations and unfair labor practice charge proceedings.
Prior to joining Ogletree Deakins, Lorena practiced education law where she represented California public educational institutions, including k-12, community colleges and California State Universities, in a variety of labor and employment law matters. She regularly advised public entities in the administration of Title IX policies applicable to employees and students alike. Lorena also routinely advised educational public entities with compliance matters related to open meeting laws, campaign finance issues and other financial conflict of interest laws.
While in law school, Lorena served as judicial extern to the Honorable Garrett L Wong of the San Francisco Superior Court, performing legal research and memoranda on a variety of legal and precedential matters related to criminal defendants. She was also research assistant to pre-eminent scholar of immigration law and policy, Bill Ong Hing, conducting research on Asian-American youth delinquency and immigration law and policy.
Lorena earned her Juris Doctor from the University of San Francisco School of Law. A native Spanish speaker, she holds a M.A. from Stanford University in Literature where she focused on LGBT Latino Literature. She received her B.A., cum laude, from Occidental College in Gender Studies and Spanish.
