Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Page 4
Michelle Flores Joins Greenberg Traurig’s Employment Practice Group
By LORELEI LAIRD, Staff Writer
Employment and business lawyer Michelle Lee Flores has joined Greenberg Traurig as a member of the firm’s labor and employment practice group.
Flores started at the firm’s Santa Monica office in mid-October, coming from Ervin, Cohen & Jessup. As of counsel, she will represent Greenberg Traurig’s business clients in employment disputes and litigation, as well as advise businesses on employment law issues such as compliance with labor laws and writing employee handbooks.
Flores, 34, said Friday she wasn’t looking to leave Ervin Cohen, where she was made a partner last spring, but she said the opportunity to work with veteran employment lawyer Diana Scott at Greenberg Traurig was too good to ignore.
“Basically, it was an opportunity to expand my practice,” she said. “Diana Scott is here and she’s just amazing....[She’s] quite experienced and well-known within the community as one of the foremost employment lawyers.”
Flores brings clients with her to Greenberg Traurig, but said she anticipates finding more and bigger ones at her new firm. With a large firm like Greenberg Traurig—ranked 21st largest in the country as of Sept. 30, 2001 by the National Law Journal—and Scott’s reputation to back her, Flores said, “The opportunities are virtually endless on the caliber and size of clients.”
Scott, a shareholder who works in the firm’s Santa Monica office, said she and others in the office were impressed by Flores’s qualifications, but are also hoping to add attorneys to the office.
“We would like to continue to add as many lawyers as our practice can continue to support,” Scott said. “We have no intention of doing anything but growing.”
Originally from the Los Angeles area, Flores holds a bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University, where she graduated magna cum laude, and a law degree from UCLA. She has written extensively on employment law, serving as business editor of the Federal Communications Law Journal during law school. She said she’s not married, but is a “very proud aunt” to her nieces.
Formed in Miami, Greenberg Traurig is a full-service law firm focusing on business. It made headlines in 2000 when Barry Richard of the firm’s Tallahassee office argued for now-President Bush in several cases and represented him in 46 lawsuits stemming from that year’s dispute over Florida votes in the presidential election. The firm has 18 offices throughout the country, as well as two in Europe, and about 875 lawyers. It also has a stable of lobbyists in its Washington, D.C., office, which Scott said has been ranked among the top five lobbying firms nationally.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company