Alan B. Exelrod starting in law school was focused on protecting civil rights.  During law school at Columbia Law School in New York, he represented low income tenants being kicked out of public housing and he went to Arkansas during the summer to work for a local attorney protecting African American school children and public employees.  Following law school he worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund based initially in San Antonio and then San Francisco litigating important issues affecting the Latino community throughout the Southwest.

Alan then focused his work on representing employees who needed protection from their current or former employers.  He developed a reputation for winning at trial and providing good judgment and common sense to his clients.  That led to representation of employees in several of the most high profile cases in Northern California.

In 1994, Alan represented Rena Weeks against Baker & McKenzie, then the largest law firm in the world.  The trial was televised over Court TV and the jury awarded over $7,000,000, at the time one of the largest verdicts in a sexual harassment case.  The verdict was reported in the press worldwide because of its significance.

Alan later represented Ellen Pao, a pioneering woman in venture capital, who challenged her employer, Kleiner Perkins in a trial in San Francisco.  Because this was one of the first cases of a woman suing a venture capital firm for discrimination and retaliation and actually taking the matter to trial, there was nationwide interest including daily blogging and reporting about the case.  

Following the trial of that case Alan has helped many other prominent persons in employment disputes with their employers.  That representation has included insuring fair severance packages and appropriate settlement agreements for disputes over gender discrimination, sex harassment, executive contract breaches and other types of discrimination and employment wrongs.

As part of his contribution to the legal community, Alan co authored for many years the multi volume treatise, California Employment Litigation, published by The Rutter Group.  He has spoken extensively about employment law issues in numerous venues.  

Because of his work, Alan has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America since the organization’s inception and ranked among the top 50 lawyers in Northern California by Super Lawyers.