Mary T. Vu

Mary T. Vu is a litigation attorney in Holland & Knight's Century City office and a member of the firm's Labor, Employment and Benefits Group.

Ms. Vu represents employers in a broad range of industries on sensitive, high-stakes employment and litigation matters, including breach of contract, wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation, sexual harassment, leave and reasonable accommodation, workers' compensation, employee classification, trade secret protection, reductions in force, wage and hour compliance, executive compensation, benefits, payroll and staffing agency vendors.

An innovative and efficient litigator, Ms. Vu routinely helps her clients save millions of dollars by calculating their potential litigation exposure and negotiating the early resolution of their cases. When necessary, she aggressively defends her clients' cases through trial or arbitration and appeal. Ms. Vu has hands-on experience litigating single-plaintiff actions, wage and hour class actions, and Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) representative actions.

In addition, Ms. Vu regularly provides advice and counsel to clients on a wide range of issues, such as hiring, conducting internal investigations, employee discipline, wage and hour, employment policies and handbooks, non-competition agreements and employment law issues for corporate transactions. More recently, Ms. Vu has worked closely with employers to navigate the complex array of issues arising from the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and its related local, state and federal government orders.

Before joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Vu worked as a trial attorney at another national labor and employment law firm.

During law school, Ms. Vu co-founded a technology startup and worked with a team of engineers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop filters designed to trap carbon dioxide emissions found in automotive exhaust. Together, Ms. Vu and her team won first place in the 2018 Lowell Milken Institute-Sandler Prize for New Entrepreneurs competition, the largest entrepreneurship competition at any law school in the United States.