Dana D.Howells

Dana—one of the firm's "Gurus of the Golden State"—has 30-plus years of practicing labor and employment law in California at an elite level. She brings breadth and depth across subject matter areas from onboarding to termination and everything in between including pay equity and compensation, incentive structure, internal investigations, privacy, reasonable accommodations, leave administration, performance management, wage and hour, handbooks and policies, employee relations, discrimination, layoffs and reductions, WARN laws, and workplace violence.

As a former in-house counsel for a multinational firm, she has a uniquely practical grasp of how legal advice can impact multiple aspects of doing business. She understands intersections between employment law and employee benefits, corporate governance, insurance/risk management, workers' compensation, and immigration. She served as a longtime officer and is past chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association's Labor and Employment Section, one of the largest and most active associations of labor and employment specialists—union, plaintiff, management and neutrals.

Starting out as a litigator trying cases, obtaining restraining orders and arguing appeals, Dana later turned her more argumentative "superpowers" to proactive advice and counsel—though she still investigates, negotiates, mediates, and advocates as needed. Lessons learned from litigation (admissibility of evidence and burdens of proof, for example) now provide essential insight for advising companies facing complex situations and choices.

Dana leverages technology by creating search indices that put answers and updates at her fingertips. She creates resources for clients, including train-the-trainer materials, work flows, primers, form sets, user guides and more. She provides hotline-style advice and counsel for clients needing immediate answers, as well as due diligence and issue-spotting for mergers, acquisitions, restructuring and downsizing. Dana loves to be a go-to "helpdesk" and sounding board when clients or other Seyfarth attorneys call for a quick sanity check or strategizing.

Dana is proud to work for Seyfarth's amazing, top-notch roster of clients and see them grow ever more successful. She feels their pain and savors their victories.