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Shannon Liss-Riordan


Lichten & Liss-Riordan, P.C.

Shannon Liss-Riordan is a nationally recognized plaintiff-side employment attorney who specializes in class action and mass arbitration wage and hour law. For nearly three decades, Ms. Liss-Riordan has achieved pioneering successes developing the law protecting workers, including tipped employees, employees misclassified as independent contractors, and others suffering all types of wage violations, including cleaning workers, truck drivers, adult entertainers, call center workers, tech workers, and many others. She pioneered litigation against “gig economy” companies for misclassifying workers, including cases against virtually every major gig company. She also pioneered mass arbitrations, which she has pursued for nearly 20 years, including on behalf of gig workers, for which she has gained widespread attention. Forbes has named her to its list of the top 200 lawyers in the country each year since the list began in 2024. Vanity Fair profiled her approach to “billionaire justice” last year in its piece entitled “Elon Musk Keeps Stiffing People. She Keeps Suing Him.” San Francisco Magazine wrote that “Liss-Riordan has achieved a kind of celebrity unseen in the legal world since Ralph Nader sued General Motors.” Politico named her to its guide to the “Top 50 thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” Each year since 2008, she has been selected for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America (Chambers). Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly included Ms. Liss-Riordan on its “roster of the state’s most influential attorneys”, describing her as a “Tenacious class-action plaintiffs’ lawyer [who] strikes fear in big-firm employment attorneys throughout Boston with her multi-million-dollar victories on behalf of strippers, waiters, skycaps and other non-exempt employees.” Ms. Liss-Riordan is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In 2022, she ran to be Massachusetts Attorney General, for which she earned endorsements from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

All Sessions by Shannon Liss-Riordan

  • Day 2


  • 4:15  - 5:45
    Plaintiffs’ lawyers and defense lawyers each accuse the other of using arbitration to gain an inappropriate tactical advantage and circumvent the law. The charge against defense counsel is that forced arbitration clauses are really designed to make it impractical—even impossible—for injured parties to bring valid legal claims against corporate defendants. Arbitration is presumptively individual, and often the stakes are too low and the costs too high for a plaintiff to proceed alone. On the other hand, the criticism of plaintiffs’ counsel is that they bring claims that defendants feel forced to settle to avoid the costs of arbitration. That can occur when defendants’ arbitration clauses require them to pay expenses associated with the arbitration process, especially upfront fees. Each side asserts that the other has found a way to prevail regardless of the merits. Are they both right? Is neither right? Is this issue ethical or merely strategic?



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October 15-16, 2026

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Shannon Liss-Riordan