VARTAIN LAW GROUP, P.C.

Ross represents clients across all practice areas of the firm, with a focus on employment and labor law, business litigation, and corporate counsel work.

Ross provides employment and corporate counseling to businesses and institutions. He advises on workplace complaints and investigations, employment separations, layoffs, disability and leave requests, ensuring compliance with wage and hour laws and other regulatory requirements. Additionally, he counsels corporate clients on a range of commercial matters.

He has extensive trial and arbitration experience, serving as co-first and second chair in numerous cases.

Ross has secured complete defense victories in a wide range of matters through law and motion advocacy, trial, arbitration, and appeals. His representative matters include, for example:

• Winning summary judgment in a 10-cause-of-action lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court alleging wrongful termination, harassment, and retaliation based on race, religion, and political speech—a decision held intact on appeal.
• Successfully protesting a several hundred thousand-dollar IRS tax penalty on behalf of a corporate client.
• Assisting in securing a 12-0 jury defense verdict in a wrongful termination case under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).
• Obtaining dismissal of a 12-cause-of-action complaint filed against a company's chief labor negotiator in federal court.
• Securing judgment on breach of charitable trust claims in a putative class action against a nonprofit and its directors and officers.
• Successfully defending an employer on appeal in a class action on claims alleging unpaid wages and waiting time penalties under the California Labor Code.
• Prevailing on appeal in defense of a university against a former student's claim of unlawful withdrawal of enrollment, with the appellate court affirming judgment for the university.
• Serving as sole first chair in arbitration, successfully defending a university against fraud and contract claims brought by a student.

Ross graduated cum laude from University of California, Hastings College of the Law (now University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco), and as part of the Honor Society ranking in the top 15% of his class. He served as Senior Managing Editor of the Hastings Law Journal and competed on the university's nationally recognized moot court team. During law school, he externed for California Court of Appeal Associate Justice Kathleen Banke and clerked at law firms.

Ross earned his B.A. in History from Willamette University, where he also played four years of varsity soccer.

Ross is a licensed attorney in California.

Mike Vartain has over 40 years of legal experience in employment and labor law, business litigation, and corporate counsel work. He founded Vartain Law Group PC more than 20 years ago.

Before that, for 15 years, he was Stanford University legal counsel where he practiced employment and labor law, student and faculty law and other non-profit law.

Prior to his time at Stanford, he was a lead labor attorney for the U.S National Labor Relations Board and before that he was a member of the United States Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps.

For the past 20 years, Mike has served as general counsel to corporations, private colleges, universities, and independent schools.

Mike is an experienced defense attorney who takes jury and bench cases to trial that are not resolved through ADR.

With Ross Vartain, Mike represents the firm's clients in regulatory matters with state and federal agencies and with mediation and arbitration of cases.

Mike is the father of three adult children, two of whom are practicing attorneys, and is the husband of their mother, Susan Vartain.

A Boston College Law School graduate, Mike was appointed by the Dean to serve as Executive Editor of the Boston College Law Review where he personally wrote and published articles on labor law and constitutional law and served as the final editor of the complete volume of the law review in his final year in law school. He earned his Juris Doctor with honors.

Mike is a licensed attorney in California.