Colette Coles is a litigation associate in Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office, where she is a member of the firm’s Employment and Labor Group. Ms. Coles’s practice encompasses all areas of employment law, including wage-and-hour violations, as well as discrimination, harassment, trade secret theft, wrongful discharge, and retaliation claims. She has particular experience defending employers in wage-and-hour class actions in the retail and restaurant industries in state and federal trial courts in California. She has assisted with depositions, motion briefing, and mediations, and has managed discovery proceedings.
Ms. Coles is also experienced in consumer class actions in federal courts throughout the country. She is part of a team that recently achieved two dismissals in class actions brought under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act after explaining to opposing counsel that the cases were factually and legally deficient.
Ms. Coles earned her J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where she was executive articles editor of the Journal of Law and Technology. During law school, Ms. Coles was a judicial extern for Judge Elizabeth Allen White of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Ms. Coles earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, summa cum laude, in classical languages.