Fatemeh Mashouf

Fatemeh Mashouf brings to her mediation practice a rare combination of large-scale employment litigation experience, global in-house leadership, and independent dispute resolution expertise. Her work spans complex class and collective actions, PAGA claims, high-exposure single-plaintiff disputes, and systemic workplace investigations. Fluent in the realities of both corporate decision-making and plaintiff advocacy, she understands not only how employment disputes are litigated, but how they unfold inside organizations long before a complaint is filed.

Fatemeh approaches mediation as both a strategist and a peacemaker. She listens closely, not only to the positions being advanced, but to the hesitations and underlying concerns that often drive impasse. Her style is patient but purposeful. She creates space for parties to feel heard, while also helping them confront risk honestly and move toward practical resolution. As a certified workplace investigator, she is particularly skilled at identifying where communication breakdowns occurred and how they can be reframed to support settlement.

Fatemeh began her legal career at a Plaintiff’s side employment firm and honed her employment litigation expertise at Littler Mendelson, Sheppard Mullin, and Reed Smith, representing Fortune 500 clients in complex employment matters, including state and federal wage-and-hour class actions, PAGA claims, and single-plaintiff cases. She served as Head of Employment at GOAT Group, a high-growth technology company, where she became the company’s first dedicated employment attorney. There, she built its employment infrastructure from the ground up, establishing investigation protocols, accommodations and leave frameworks, and HR training programs across 45 states and more than a dozen countries.

Managing employment matters on a global scale sharpened Fatemeh’s ability to see beyond what was written in a brief. Conducting in-person anti-harassment training across countries, including Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and working as a fluent speaker of American English and Farsi, she saw firsthand how cultural context shapes the way people communicate, respond, and experience the workplace. She brings that intuition into every mediation, listening closely not just to what parties say, but to where they hesitate, where they hold back, and what underlying tensions must be uncovered to secure a resolution.

In her mediation practice, Fatemeh blends facilitative and evaluative methods, tailored to the situation and the needs of the parties. As a certified workplace investigator, she can often provide a rare window into how a dispute escalated, and understanding the breakdowns is a key to achieving closure. She takes the time to listen to parties’ perspectives, both what is said and what is not said, making it possible to come up with creative avenues together that may provide business solutions in addition to financial demands and offers. She also contributes over one hundred pro bono mediations annually through the LA Superior Court’s Resolve Law panel and MVP.

Fatemeh holds herself to working as a “peacemaker first, dealmaker when it counts,” taking the time to ensure that decision-makers feel heard and informed, not outmaneuvered. Even when working with sophisticated clients, Fatemeh’s commitment to a human-centric approach is the foundation for solutions that offer all parties an opportunity for genuine closure through mediation, because a “good deal” is one where everyone is equally relieved, not equally unhappy.