About

Diana Bardes is the Managing Member of the Firm. Since joining the Firm in 2011, Ms. Bardes has been active in all phases of the Firm’s practice, primarily as a litigator. She represents unions in both the private and public sector on a wide array of labor and employment issues, including in negotiations for collective bargaining agreements, arbitration proceedings regarding contractual violations and challenges to employer-imposed discipline upon bargaining unit members, unfair labor practice charges and in litigation.

In her public sector practice, Ms. Bardes has experience advising and representing unions with national federal sector bargaining units. She has litigated various issues before the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Federal Services Impasses Panel, including cases challenging restrictions on the use of official time and various unilateral changes, enforcing arbitration awards, addressing bargaining impasses, and representing unions in negotiability appeals. She has also represented federal sector unions in litigation against the federal government. Locally, Ms. Bardes represents the firm’s clients and individual employees in actions before the D.C. Office of Employee Appeals and the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board.

She also represents employee benefit plans in litigation and co-directs the Firm’s collections practice, which includes all stages of litigation, post-judgment enforcement and negotiations with delinquent employers for both owed contributions and withdrawal liability for the Firm’s various benefit plans. Through this representation, Ms. Bardes is the Firm’s lead litigator in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and is well-versed in managing cases in the “Rocket Docket.”

Ms. Bardes was named a Super Lawyers’ Rising Star in labor and employment litigation in the District of Columbia each year since 2014 and has served as a speaker for the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans and other organizations. Ms. Bardes is also a Professorial Lecturer in Law at her alma mater, The George Washington University Law School, where she provides instruction for the Law School’s advocacy competitions.

Ms. Bardes received a J.D. with honors from The George Washington University Law School in 2011, where she was a Notes Editor for the Federal Circuit Bar Journal. Ms. Bardes received her B.A., summa cum laude, in Political Science from The George Washington University in 2009 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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