Luiza Manuelian is a Partner at Grant Shenon Almaraz, where she leads the firm’s Labor & Employment practice. An experienced trial lawyer and trusted advisor to business owners throughout California, Luiza defends employers in their most consequential workplace disputes. She also helps them build compliant, resilient organizations that stay out of the courtroom.
Luiza’s litigation practice focuses on high-stakes class and representative actions, including wage-and-hour and misclassification claims and actions brought under California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). She defends employers against claims of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, whistleblower violations, wrongful termination, civil rights violations, defamation, breach of employment contract, and unfair business practices. She also represents clients before government agencies, including the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), the Employment Development Department (EDD), and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Beyond the courtroom, Luiza is a proactive strategic counselor. She advises clients on compliance with federal, state, and local employment laws. She conducts wage-and-hour audits that identify risk before it becomes liability, and she drafts employee handbooks, policies, and employment agreements tailored to each client’s industry and operations. She also trains executives, managers, and human resources teams on sexual harassment prevention, wage-and-hour compliance, workplace violence prevention, employee discipline, and leave management.
A sought-after speaker, Luiza is a frequent presenter on labor and employment law for the Beverly Hills Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the San Fernando Valley Bar Association, and the Armenian Women’s Bar Association. She also addresses large audiences of business leaders, human resources professionals, and attorneys on emerging workplace law issues and best practices for employers.
Luiza brings deep trial experience to every matter she handles. Before joining Grant Shenon Almaraz, she practiced at a firm devoted exclusively to employment defense, representing employers across California. Earlier in her career, she served as Supervising Partner and Chair of the Toxic Tort Division at a Los Angeles law firm. There she tried product liability, toxic tort, and civil rights cases in courts throughout the state, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.
Luiza’s commitment to the legal profession began early: she started working in law firms at age 15. She earned her J.D. from Southwestern Law School in 2004. While there, she served as a judicial extern and competed in the Moot Court Program, where she was a finalist in the American Bar Association’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition in New Orleans. She received her B.A. in Psychology from California State University, Northridge in 2000, where her research in gender studies was published.
