Justo G. González is a trial and appellate lawyer with nearly three decades of experience defending employers, technology companies, agricultural producers, and closely held businesses in their highest-stakes disputes. He chairs Stokes Lawrence’s Class Action Practice Group and serves as the firm’s Risk Management Shareholder, advising the firm and its lawyers on professional responsibility, conflicts, privilege, engagement structure, and the ethical dimensions of complex representations. Those dual roles place him at the intersection of the disputes that most threaten enterprise value and the judgment calls that most directly bear on a law firm’s practice, and he brings the same discipline to counseling clients navigating high-consequence risk.
As Chair of the Class Action Practice Group, Justo leads the firm’s defense of aggregate litigation across employment, consumer-protection, competition, and statutory-penalty regimes. He has defended systemic pattern-or-practice actions brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, multi-plaintiff wage-and-hour and discrimination class actions, consumer class actions under state and federal consumer-protection statutes, and California Proposition 65 enforcement matters. His approach pairs aggressive early-stage motion practice and dispositive summary judgment with disciplined trial preparation for the cases that must be tried, and with early, unsentimental assessment of the cases that should not.
Justo’s broader national litigation practice spans trademark and trade-secret litigation, commercial disputes, and appellate advocacy in state and federal courts across the country, from Washington State to Florida. He has tried cases to verdict, argued appeals in the Ninth Circuit, and secured arbitration awards in matters where the record and the client’s exposure left no room for a second-best result.
Clients turn to him when the choice between litigating and resolving a matter carries reputational, regulatory, and financial consequences that must be weighed together.
