Shirley Wang

Of Counsel

Shirley Wang is a litigator, trial attorney, and employment law advisor, representing primarily employers and senior management. Along with Timothy Davis, she recently tried to a defense verdict a case involving sex and national origin harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination claims. She also recently prevented class certification in a wage and hour case involving an employer with franchised locations in several states, which result led to a nominal settlement of the entire case.

In her sixteen years of law practice, Ms. Wang has successfully defended employers in all types of employment litigations, including race, national origin, age, sex, and disability discrimination, harassment, and retaliation cases, as well as wage and hour actions, employment contract, trade secret and employee solicitation, and unfair competition cases. Ms. Wang represents employers and management in a diverse and wide range of industries including, software and technology; restaurant and hospitality; food manufacturing, distribution and sales; real estate development, construction, and sales; residential and commercial maintenance and janitorial services; and non-profit organizations.

In addition to employment cases, Ms. Wang has litigated a broad range of commercial contract disputes, securities class actions, fraud, intellectual property, and habitability cases.

As part of her practice, Ms. Wang regularly advises and counsels employers on a wide variety of employment law matters including:

• Employee hiring and retention
• Confidentiality and protection of trade secrets
• Personnel policies and handbooks
• Drug testing and privacy issues
• Discipline and termination
• Classification of employees and independent contractors
• Discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims
• Management training, including harassment prevention training
• Employee misconduct investigations
• Working hours, conditions, and wages
• Overtime and other wage and hour audits
• Family and medical leaves of absences
• Disability accommodations
• Business reorganizations and reductions in force
• Start-up company issues, checklists, forms, and recordkeeping requirements

Keeping in mind business needs and objectives, Ms. Wang counsels employers and management to be legally compliant and to minimize their risk of liability, and provides practical, cost-effective solutions.

Ms. Wang also represents individual executives of public and private companies in the negotiation and preparation of their employment-related agreements, including separation, confidentiality, arbitration, indemnification, and consulting agreements. She provides advice on a variety of issues, including cash and incentive compensation, termination, change in control, severance, indemnification, non-competition, non-solicitation, and confidentiality.

Prior to joining The Davis Law Firm, Ms. Wang litigated employment, general commercial, and securities fraud cases at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto. In 1999, Ms. Wang helped start the employment law practice group at the San Francisco office of Preston Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates), where she focused on both counseling and litigation. Ms. Wang also served as Chief Counsel of the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning from 2001 to 2003.

Ms. Wang received her law degree from New York University School of Law. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Washington, where she was admitted as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She speaks conversational Mandarin, and serves on the boards of several non-profit community organizations.

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