Work Experience Highlights

Paul Garrison established his own law firm focusing primarily on Alternative Dispute Resolution. He is an Early Neutral Evaluator and Mediator appointed by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Paul is also a Mediator appointed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Paul is a certified Arbitrator by the American Arbitration Association. He has already experienced early success in helping parties negotiate to settlement both multi-million dollar commercial disputes and employment disputes. For example, following Paul's Evaluation, the plaintiff dismissed its lawsuit with prejudice in a multi-million dollar commercial dispute.

Paul joined California State Automobile Association (AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah) in November 2006 as the Director of Legal & Regulatory Affairs and Assistant Corporate Secretary. In this role, he was responsible for managing litigation, commercial transactions, people and operations for the Legal Department in an enterprise of 7,000 employees. In this capacity, Paul settled multi-plaintiff and class action litigation involving both commercial and employment disputes.

Previously, Mr. Garrison was employed for Wells Fargo for almost 12 years in both legal and management positions. His initial position was Associate Counsel handling employment matters and he was promoted to Senior Counsel and he earned the corporate title of Vice President. As Senior Counsel, his responsibilities included managing litigation including class actions and providing advice and counsel to Human Resource Managers and senior business executives. 

After serving as legal counsel, Paul was promoted to the rank of senior executive as the Vice President and Manager of Corporate Employee Relations. He oversaw four dynamic business units: Employee Relations, Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity, Background Investigations and Community Support. As the Employee Relations Manager, Paul supervised a team of 20 experienced HR practitioners whose role was to develop and interpret employment policies and practices and to resolve employee grievances in the 155,000-employee enterprise. As the Employee Relations Manager, he jointly represented the interests of the employees and the company.

After his tenure in Human Resources Management, Paul transferred to the position of Vice President and Manager of Compliance for Merchant Payment Solutions to gain business line experience. In this capacity, he was responsible for ensuring that the business was in compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements, bank policies and procedures. Under Paul's watch, the business successfully passed all of its internal and OCC audits.

Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Mr. Garrison was in private practice in San Francisco where he was an Associate Attorney devoted to employment and labor law for approximately four years. First, he was associated with Littler Mendelson and later with Steinhart & Falconer (DLAPiper).

Before entering the practice of law, he was a Human Resources Manager for Macy's New York after completing its renowned Executive Training program. Paul enjoyed responsibility as Training Manager and he was later promoted to Employment Manager for one of Macy's largest stores, King's Plaza.

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INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

During his career, Paul has gained experience in the following industries:

• Banking
• Insurance
• Retail
• Utilities
• Publishing
• Manufacturing
• Healthcare

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Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

• Mediation Panel
• Arbitration Panel

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