Howard Knee represents high-profile companies in complex and high-stakes cases, including defending discrimination and sexual harassment cases as well as wage and hour class actions and Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) representative actions. He is respected by his peers for the professional and intelligent way he approaches his cases and the innovative strategies he uses to defend his clients. In his 50-year career, Howard has handled nearly 100 trials. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and various state courts of appeal. He has also handled jury and bench trials in both federal and state courts, arbitrations, labor arbitrations, and various administrative proceedings.
Howard also has significant experience handling matters before the National Labor Relations Board. His experience includes representing management in union organizing campaigns, negotiating collective bargaining agreements, responding to and litigating unfair labor practice charges, and handling grievances and arbitrations.
As a student at UCLA Law School, Howard was an intern at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a Ford Foundation Fellow at the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C., the country’s first public interest law firm. After law school, he returned to Washington, D.C., where he worked first in the Ralph Nader organization and then served as a legislative assistant in the United States Congress to the Hon. James Corman (Van Nuys).
Relocating to Los Angeles, Howard joined a union-side labor firm and represented a class of women in a landmark sex discrimination case in the United States Supreme Court, Manhart v. City of Los Angeles, Dept. of Water & Power, 435 U.S. 702 (1978). The Manhart case was recently featured in a book titled Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work as one of the ten cases decided by the United States Supreme Court that most affected women’s lives in the workplace.
Howard formed his own boutique employer and management-side law firm in 1980, where he practiced until joining Blank Rome in 2010.
Howard was elected a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2015. For 2023, he is listed in Best Lawyers in America© for “Litigation – Labor and Employment in Los Angeles.” He was recognized by the Daily Journal as one of California’s top 75 labor and employment lawyers for 2014, has been listed in Southern California Super Lawyers for “Employment Litigation” every year since 2006, and is rated AV-Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell. Howard is also listed in 2019 Chambers USA as a “Recognized Practitioner in Labor & Employment Law” and in 2019–2022 in Benchmark Litigation as a “Labor & Employment Star – California.”