Joan Fife heads Winston & Strawn’s San Francisco Labor & Employment Practice and represents employers throughout the country in class action employment litigation. Clients praise her “very good courtroom demeanor” and describe her as “one of the best attorneys for wage and hour class actions” that is “great at strategy and thinking about the best way to handle things” and knows “when it’s appropriate to be aggressive.”
Fife has more than 35 years of experience as a labor and employment litigator. She has had lead responsibility for over 100 class or collective actions across the country. She has defeated conditional certification in nationwide FLSA actions a number of times, including in claims alleging overtime resulting from alleged off-the-clock work, misclassification of employees, and misclassification of independent contractors. In one collective action, Fife secured more than US$800,000 of her client’s attorney’s fees from the individual plaintiffs after prevailing on summary judgment on all counts. Fife has never had a Rule 23 class certified against any of her clients.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers | 2026 | Labor & Employment, esp. Litigation |
| The 2025 Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers | 2025 | Labor & Employment, esp. Litigation |
| The 2024 Lawdragon 500 Corporate Employment Lawyers | 2024 | Labor & Employment, esp. Litigation |
| Lawdragon Releases Latest Guide to the Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers in America | 2022 | Labor & Employment, esp. Litigation |
| Lawdragon's Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers of America | 2021 | Labor & Employment, esp. Litigation |
| Lawdragon 500 Leading U.S. Corporate Employment Lawyers | 2020 | Labor & Employment, esp. Litigation |
For 15 years, Fife has been the lead attorney defending one of the nation’s largest financial institutions in numerous wage and hour class and FLSA collective actions in California and across the country. Fife’s wage and hour class and collective actions have involved misclassification issues, off-the-clock claims, meal and rest break claims, donning and doffing claims, rounding claims, “seating claims,” stand alone PAGA claims, and failure to reimburse claims, among others. She has spent months as trial counsel defending hundreds of individual wage and hour damages claims.
Fife also has extensive experience conducting investigations in heavily regulated industries, defending whistleblower claims, handling significant employment discrimination claims, and representing companies in trade secret/noncompete litigation.