IRA SPIRO
Ira Spiro has been attorney for employees in more than 100 wage & hour class actions. In May, 2011, he was lead trial counsel for the employees in one of the few wage & hour class actions that have gone to trial by jury in California. He was a founding partner of his former firm, Spiro Moss LLP, later known as Spiro Moore LLP, a statewide leader in wage & hour class actions from 2001 to 2013.
He has also been a tenants' rights attorney since 1977. He provides advice and negotiation for many residential tenants without charge. Normally he does not take on lawsuits for tenants, but he is open to doing so.
Mr. Spiro served four years as the dean of Peoples College of Law in Los Angeles, a law school founded in 1974 and dedicated to serving low income and minority communities. He has taught Wage & Hour Law, Constitutional Law, Appeals, Civil Procedure and Contract Law at the school.
Mr. Spiro has been a member of the governing board of the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles starting January, 2021, and was re-elected to a year term in February 2022.
Mr. Spiro has been practicing law since January, 1976. For more than 25 years he has had the AV rating, the highest, from the traditional lawyer rating publication, Martindale Hubbell. Mr. Spiro received his B.A. in 1971 from Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa, and his law degree in 1975 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Spiro served an appointed term as a member of the ethics committee of the State Bar of California. He also served three appointed terms as a member, vice-chair, and chair of the ADR committee of the State Bar of California, the committee that works on the subjects of mediation and arbitration. Along with several California judges and mediators, Mr. Spiro is one of the authors of the California Rules of Court on mediator conduct, Rules 3.890 et seq. In 2020 through 2021, he was a member of the State Bar's California Paraprofessional Program Working Group
Mr. Spiro has been a legal aid lawyer and a deputy public defender. He is one of the founders of the Korean American community center in Los Angeles.
Mr. Spiro has lectured at four annual conventions of the State Bar of California, and before other bar associations, on subjects related to class actions, such as:
- class action settlements
- legal ethics issues in class action litigation
- legal ethics issues in class action settlements
- releases of the defendant's liability in class actions
- attorney marketing and advertising
- mediation of class actions
- combined wage & hour class actions/FLSA representative actions
