PHILADELPHIA, February 10, 2026―Duane Morris has been honored as a 2025 Employment Group of the Year by Law360, recognizing its exceptional work in employment matters. This prestigious award highlights practice groups that have delivered outstanding results for their clients in significant employment cases over the past year.
Brian L. Johnsrud, chair of Duane Morris' Employment, Labor, Benefits and Immigration Practice Group, attributes his team's wins over the past year to bespoke strategy and execution, customized for each client's needs.
"We don't have a playbook that we use in every case," Johnsrud said. "We really … dig in to understand what venue we're in, what opposing counsel are we litigating against, what the trends in a particular industry are."
He said the practice group — which employs about 120 lawyers spread across all the country's major metropolitan areas and is the firm's third-largest practice group — is "aggressively recruiting" more employment attorneys to match client demand. Johnsrud said he wants to expand his team to respond to growing class actions coming out of California, as well as needs around immigrant workforces.
The firm's Employment, Labor, Benefits and Immigration Practice Group has become known for its innovative lawyering, partner and chair of the firm's Class Action Defense Group Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. told Law360. That's why companies often turn to Duane Morris' employment lawyers when faced with class challenges that present millions of dollars in exposure, he said — especially when a case isn't going their way.
The Duane Morris team served as lead counsel on several major employment law victories over the past year. A sample of the firm’s most significant employment wins include:
Geico replaced its prior counsel with Duane Morris attorneys after losing key rulings in a collective action that aimed to represent thousands of call center workers who claimed they were stiffed on overtime for pre-shift, post-shift and downtime duties. In June, the court denied the workers' bid for conditional certification after Duane Morris collected extensive deposition testimony from call center workers demonstrating that there was no common policy requiring additional, uncompensated work. Typically, courts aren't keen to take a deep dive into the kind of evidence the Duane Morris team presented when fending off the workers' bid for collective certification. Usually, the evidence is considered later in the case at the decertification stage. The team was able to convince the judge to consider details showing that the case wasn't fit for a collective resolution in order to be efficient with the court’s resources.
Tortilla manufacturer El Milagro was accused of allowing sexual harassment to run rampant in many of the business' facilities. Before the workers leading the case could file a motion for class certification, the Duane Morris team made a rare move and asked the court to preemptively deny class status for the case, arguing that the suit didn't meet the requirements for a collective resolution. The gamble worked, and the judge agreed with Duane Morris' arguments. In November 2024, the court granted the company's motion for summary judgment. El Milagro faced an estimated $105 million in damages if the case were to proceed.
Read the Duane Morris Practice Group of the Year profile on the Law360 website (subscription required).
About Duane Morris
Duane Morris LLP provides innovative solutions to today’s multifaceted legal and business challenges through the collegial and collaborative culture of its more than 900 attorneys in offices across the United States and internationally. The firm represents a broad array of clients, spanning all major practices and industries. Duane Morris has been recognized by BTI Consulting as both a client service leader and a highly recommended law firm.
