Joseph Paller has served on the Personnel Commission of the Los Angeles Unified School District since 2001. In his day job, Joe represents employee benefit plans, labor unions, and plaintiffs in class action litigation as managing partner of Gilbert & Sackman in Los Angeles.
Uniquely, Joe has been made a Fellow of both the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (2017) and the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers (2012) in recognition of his achievements in and contributions to both specializations. Best Lawyers named Joe the “2017 Lawyer of the Year” in the field of “Labor Law-Union.” Only a single lawyer in Los Angeles and surrounding counties is honored as the “Lawyer of the Year” in a field of practice. The Daily Journal (California's leading legal newspaper) has ranked Joe as one of the top 75 employment attorneys in California. He has been recognized as a Southern California Super Lawyer for 12 consecutive years. He has been rated AV-Preeminent®, the highest level of professional excellence, by Martindale Hubbell for the past 19 years.
Joe is an Adjunct Professor at the USC Gould School of Law, and an instructor at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. Since 1995, Mr. Paller has served as an employment dispute arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association.
Joe serves as a Chapter Co-Editor for the current edition of the leading legal treatise on ERISA, Employee Benefits Law, published jointly by the American Bar Association and Bloomberg BNA. Joe’s articles on employee benefits and labor issues have appeared in many books and journals, including   the Labor Lawyer published by the American Bar Association, the California Labor &Employment Law Quarterly published by the State Bar of California, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Arbitrators published by Bloomberg BNA, various white papers published by the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, and the Benefits & Compensation Digest published by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. For many years, Joe was a regular contributor to the "Shoptalk" column in the Los Angeles Times, providing answers to labor and employment questions.
Since 2000, Joe has spoken at 52 programs, including events sponsored by the American Bar Association, the American Arbitration Association, the National Labor Relations Board, the State Bar of California, the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, the UFCW Attorneys Conference, the Labor & Employment Relations Association and its subchapters, and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.
Joe is a former member of the Board of Directors of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee in Washington, D.C. He is also a former Chair of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and has been a member of the Section's Executive Committee since 1987.
Joe has been admitted to practice law in California, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the UCLA School of Law.