1 Hour MCLE

Andrew H. Friedman, a name partner with the law firm of Helmer · Friedman LLP, primarily represents employees in all aspects of employment law.

Mr. Friedman has handled a wide range of employment-related litigation in state and federal courts including winning a $4.1 Million jury verdict in a fraud and breach of employment contract lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court and jury verdict in the Orange County Superior Court in a sexual harassment case. He has resolved multiple seven-figure wage and hour class actions.

Mr. Friedman served as Counsel of Record in Lightfoot v. Cendant Mortgage Corp. et. al. (Case No. 10-56068) where he successfully convinced the U. S. Supreme Court to grant the petition for certiorari that he filed on behalf of his clients. In January 2017, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision authored by Justice Sotomayor, reversed the Ninth Circuit and ruled in favor of Mr. Friedman’s clients.

From 2020-2024, out of more than 88,000 attorneys in the Los Angeles area, Super Lawyers named Andrew H. Friedman to its list of the Top 100 Super Lawyers in Southern California and from 2019-2023, LAWDRAGON selected Mr. Friedman as one of the Nation’s leading plaintiff employment attorneys.

Chambers USA, the Nation’s leading legal data and analytics provider, has awarded Mr. Friedman with its highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment.

Mr. Friedman is the author of a two-volume, approximately 1500-page, employment discrimination law treatise entitled Litigating Employment Discrimination Cases (James Pub. 2005-2024). Contributing Authors to the treatise include attorneys from: Proskauer Rose LLP, Sheppard Mullin LLP, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP, and Brown, Goldstein & Levy as well as mediators Lisa Klerman, Jan attorneys at law
Frankel Schau, and Mark Fingerman.

Lately, Mr. Friedman has received significant positive (and negative) buzz for his cutting-edge law review article – Attorney Workplace Investigations: Neither Impartial Nor Independent, Cal. Lab. & Emp. L. R. Vol. 37, No. 2 (2023).

Anthony J. Oncidi is the co-chair of the firm’s Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office. Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including litigation and preventive counseling, wage and hour matters, including class actions, wrongful termination, employee discipline, Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, executive employment contract disputes, sexual harassment training and investigations, workplace violence, drug testing and privacy issues, Sarbanes-Oxley claims and employee raiding and trade secret protection. A substantial portion of Tony’s practice involves the defense of employers in large class actions, employment discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration proceedings, including FINRA matters.

Tony is recognized as a leading lawyer by such highly respected publications and organizations as the Los Angeles Daily Journal, The Hollywood Reporter, and Chambers USA, which gives him the highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment. According to Chambers USA, clients say Tony is “brilliant at what he does… He is even keeled, has a high emotional IQ, is a great legal writer and orator, and never gives up.” Other clients report: “Tony has an outstanding reputation” and he is “smart, cost effective and appropriately aggressive.” Tony is hailed as “outstanding,” particularly for his “ability to merge top-shelf lawyerly advice with pragmatic business acumen.” He is highly respected in the industry, with other commentators lauding him as a “phenomenal strategist” and “one of the top employment litigators in the country.”

“Tony is the author of the treatise titled Employment Discrimination Depositions (Juris Pub’g 2020; www.jurispub.com), co-author of Proskauer on Privacy (PLI 2020), and, since 1990, has been a regular columnist for the official publication of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Tony has been a featured guest on Fox 11 News and CBS News in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading national media outlets such as The National Law Journal, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Tony is a frequent speaker on employment law topics for large and small groups of employers and their counsel, including the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), PIHRA, the National CLE Conference, National Business Institute, the Employment Round Table of Southern California (Board Member), the Council on Education in Management, the Institute for Corporate Counsel, the State Bar of California, the California Continuing Education of the Bar Program and the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. He has testified as an expert witness regarding wage and hour issues as well as the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and has served as a faculty member of the National Employment Law Institute. He has served as an arbitrator in an employment discrimination matter.

Tony is an appointed Hearing Examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission Board of Rights and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and a guest lecturer at USC Law School and a guest lecturer at UCLA Law School.