Overview
Elvira Kras focuses her practice on employment litigation and traditional labor matters. Elvira represents and advocates for management in union organizing campaigns and elections, unfair labor practice investigations, representation disputes, hearings and trials before the National Labor Relations Board, and in collective bargaining negotiations. She also counsels employers on the National Labor Relations Act, union avoidance, contract interpretation and best practices for corporate campaigns.
Elvira regularly defends employers in litigation involving disclosure of trade secrets, violation of noncompetition agreements and whistleblower disputes. Additionally, she has experience with putative class action and single and multi-plaintiff lawsuits for claims of meal and rest period violations, failure to pay wages and bonuses, off-the-clock work, misclassification, discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination, in federal and state courts and administrative agencies, including in proceedings before the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Public Employment Relations Board, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the US Department of Labor. Elvira routinely obtains victories for clients both pre-litigation and in early motion practice; recent successes include obtaining a complete dismissal with prejudice of all claims on summary judgment in a disability discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuit for a national technology retailer as well as a corporate plaintiff’s voluntary dismissal of all claims following receipt of the early motion for summary judgement and sanctions in a restrictive covenant matter.
Hand in hand with her labor and litigation practice, Elvira advises employers regarding policies and procedures, leaves, wage and hour laws, hiring and termination and compliance related matters, trains workforces and managements in industry specific anti-harassment training, drafts handbooks and agreements and conducts due diligence in multi-million dollar transactions while guiding corporate clients through as smooth as possible transitions in mergers and acquisitions.
Fluent in both Russian and Spanish, Elvira enjoys using her language skills to counsel both domestic and international clients.
Community
- University of Southern California, Assistant Instructor, Trial Advocacy. Elvira teaches trial advocacy to undergraduate students and is committed to providing the same mentorship and training from which she benefitted as an alumni of the University of Southern California’s Trial Advocacy program where she received the Samuel Leibowitz Award for Trial Advocacy.
Credentials
Education
Columbia Law School, JD, 2014
University of Southern California, magna cum laude, 2010
Admissions
California
New York
Courts / Agencies
US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
US District Court for the Eastern District of New York
US District Court for the Northern District of New York
US District Court for the Southern District of New York
US District Court for the Central District of California
US District Court for the Northern District of California
US District Court for the Eastern District of California
New York Supreme Court
California State Court
Languages
Russian
Spanish
English
