Chelsea Dwyer Petersen

About Chelsea's Practice

Chelsea Dwyer Petersen is a partner whose practice encompasses employment counseling and litigation with a focus on complex class action cases. Ms. Petersen's areas of experience include proactive defense of discrimination and wage and hour class action cases for clients such as Les Schwab, The Boeing Company, and OfficeMax. She has substantial experience in all phases of class cases including early strategic assessment, defeat of class certification, supervision of large scale electronic document review, oversight of expert witnesses and taking a case to trial. She also regularly defends employers against individual discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wage and hour claims. Representative clients include Microsoft and Starbucks. As a counselor she works closely with clients to minimize the possibility of litigation by providing efficient advice regarding every-day human resources issues and creating employment handbooks and policies to keep business moving smoothly. In particular, she counsels employers on how to comply with federal and state statutes such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Title VII, the Washington Law Against Discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

Education

• Seattle University School of Law, J.D., cum laude, 2002
• University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1994

Major Publications & Speaking Engagements

• Co-Editor, Washington Employment Law Letter (since 2011)
• Contributing Editor, West Employment Law Letter
• Author, "Seattle scheduling law to take effect July 1," Human Resources News, June 19, 2017

Professional Recognition

• Listed in Washington Super Lawyers Rising Star, (2008 - 2010)

Admitted to Practice

Washington; Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; U.S. District Courts, Western and Eastern Districts of Washington