Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Seyfarth Shaw has brought on Norton Rose Fulbright wage-and-hour litigation partner John Yslas for its labor and employment group in Los Angeles, where he most recently served as head of the retail international business group at his now former firm.

Yslas, who officially joined Seyfarth late last week, concentrates his practice on wage-and-hour and consumer class actions in both state and federal court.

“I have noticed a substantial uptick in the class action work, which has become a big emphasis for me,” said Yslas, who has been practicing labor and employment law in Los Angeles for more than two decades.

Before he joined Norton Rose in early 2014, less than a year after the global legal giant was formed through the union of London-based Norton Rose and Houston-based Fulbright & Jaworski, Yslas served as the national vice chair of the labor and employment group and Western group chair at Foley & Lardner, where he made partner in early 2010.

John Yslas.

In addition to his labor and employment background, Yslas also has litigation experience in pretrial, jury trial, arbitration and appellate matters, according to a Seyfarth statement Monday announcing his hire.

“John is an outstanding lawyer with a tremendous track record of success in wage-and-hour litigation,” said a statement from Laura Maechtlen, who last year was appointed as chair of Seyfarth's labor and employment department. “Equipped with the firm's national platform, we are excited to see John take his dynamic practice to the next level.”

Seyfarth opened its first California office in Century City in 1973 after relocating two partners from its Chicago headquarters. In 2009, the firm further expanded its presence in Los Angeles with another office downtown. Seyfarth said it now has more than 230 lawyers based in the greater Los Angeles area, handling corporate, commercial litigation, labor and employment and real estate work.

Labor law remains a flagship field for Seyfarth, which in January welcomed aboard partner Randel Johnson, a former senior official at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to chair its government relations and policy practice from Washington, D.C.

Nearly half of the 865-lawyer firm is devoted to labor and employment work, Seyfarth said. In San Francisco, Seyfarth earlier this year hired employee benefits partner S. Bradley Perkins, who spent the past half-dozen years as senior counsel at the Pacific Maritime Association, for its local labor and employment group.

Aaron Lubeley, co-managing partner of Seyfarth's Los Angeles office, said in a statement that Yslas would be “a great asset to our wage-and-hour team and the many industries we serve on the West Coast.” Lubeley was a former colleague of Yslas while they both worked at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in the early 2000s.

Yslas also serves on the board of trustees for the Mexican American Bar Foundation and on the board of directors for the California Minority Counsel Program, along with Maechtlen.

“I hold Aaron and Laura in very high regard, so that made a big impact on my very positive reason for coming to Seyfarth,” Yslas said. “Seyfarth has a deep commitment to diversity, and is very forward-thinking, and that is important to me.”

In a posting on professional networking website LinkedIn last week, Seyfarth noted that it is currently in the market for a new director of diversity and inclusion, a position that has become increasingly popular in the legal industry.

Seyfarth, which went through a round of mass layoffs last year, saw its gross revenue rise in 2017, to $637.5 million. As for Norton Rose, the loss of Yslas comes a little more than a month after the global firm bolstered its Los Angeles office with partner S. Ward Atterbury, a former co-head of the M&A practice at Katten Muchin Rosenman.