Mediator’s Minute: Takeaways from the California Lawyers Association's 15th Annual Advanced Wage and Hour Conference

The 2025 Annual Advanced Wage and Hour Conference was chock full of programming highlighting the latest and greatest in California wage and hour law.  Hosted by the Labor and Employment Law Section of the California Lawyers Association, the conference gathered together attorneys, neutrals, judges and state agency staff in Pasadena for back-to-back panels full of insights.  Below, I highlight a few of my takeaways from the conference.

The Current State of CA Wage and Hour Law (and why you still need to brief key holdings)

One of the opening panels included an excellent analysis of recent cases by Adrianne De Castro, a plaintiffs’ attorney with the Desai Law Firm, P.C., and Matthew Weber, a defense attorney with Greenberg Traurig, LLP.  As the two walked through their perspectives on key holdings of some of the year’s most consequential cases, I was struck by their ability to find “wins” for their respective clients in each of the holdings.

A good litigator can take just about any holding and find room for optimism.  This is a good lesson for mediation as well.  Often, I see attorneys take for granted that this or that “seminal case” stands absolutely for one proposition or another.  Sometimes, we are tempted to skip or gloss over these significant cases in mediation briefs.  However, as so elegantly demonstrated by De Castro and Weber, even these seemingly settled matters can lay the groundwork for an argument that your matter is distinguishable.  You can bet your counterpart on the other side is working hard to spin the holding to their position and your mediation brief is an excellent opportunity to arm your mediator (ahem) with the counterpoint.

PAGA, PAGA, PAGA

In addition, there was, of course, significant discussion of PAGA and PAGA reform throughout the conference.  Todd Ratshin, Deputy Secretary for Enforcement at the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), noted that the overall volume of filings appears to be similar to the pre-reform figures (excluding the period surrounding the date the reforms took effect when it appears some may have rushed to file based on the reform deadline).  As of 2020, the LWDA has increased the documents available through its PAGA database (available here: https://cadir.my.salesforce-sites.com/PagaSearch ) and continue to update the FAQs (available here: https://www.labor.ca.gov/resources/paga/paga-faqs/).

Another takeaway flagged both by practitioners and judges who spoke, was the fact that the cure provisions and the early evaluation conferences were still very new.  Few had experienced them all the way through, and there was a real sense that all parties were still in the tentative phase, testing out their theories and weighing whether certain aspects of the reform would benefit their clients.

Read Your Judge’s Standing Orders, Then Read Them Again

Finally, the program closed with a fantastic panel of judges representing different jurisdictions with very different approaches.  It was a great reminder to always pay attention to your court and your judge—it could mean the difference between relating or staying a matter, fast-tracking settlement discussions, or being asked for supplemental briefing due to a “red flag” provision in the parties’ settlement agreement.

Overall it was a fantastic conference and I look forward to the next one!  A huge thank you to CLA and to all of the folks who worked on the 2025 conference.

Shireen Wetmore is a mediator specializing in employment matters and can be reached for questions, comment, or booking at www.shireenwetmoremediation.com.  

This Mediator’s Minute is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.