Haig Baghdassarian, principal attorney of the Law Office of Haig Baghdassarian, has extensive experience advising clients and litigating labor and employment, municipal law, and governmental relations matters. Haig also has an active immigration law practice, handling most aspects of immigration issues, including asylum claims, family-based petitions and employment and investor based immigration matters.
Previously, Haig was a member of Meyers Nave’s Labor and Employment Law Practice group, where he advised public entities on a variety of employment-related issues, including discipline and termination, wage and hour matters, discrimination claims and traditional labor matters. Haig represented cities and towns, large and small, in complex employment-related litigation. He also drafted and recommended changes to personnel manuals and civil service rules.
Previously, Haig served as the Legislative Coordinator for the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, where he advised city departments and employees about conflict of interest, ethics, election finance, and lobbying matters. He also worked to improve the City's municipal codes related to those issues and drafted proposed legislation for consideration.
Prior to his work there, Haig was a Deputy City Attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney’s office representing San Francisco in worker’s compensation claims filed against the City. He negotiated settlements and frequently argued for the City before WCAB judges at administrative hearings and trials. Haig also advised and counseled examiners and City departments with respect to worker’s compensation issues.
Haig is a former Commissioner of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, a position he was appointed to by then-mayor Willie Brown. There he worked with the City to investigate and mediate discrimination complaints, monitor city contracts, certify disadvantaged businesses, advise and resolve community issues involving systemic discrimination and make recommendations with respect to legislation and rules to be adopted by the City.
As a recent Hastings law school graduate, Haig spent time as an attorney at one of California’s largest public law firms where he worked on labor and employment matters. There he negotiated on behalf of clients in the collective bargaining process, drafted portions of a San Francisco charter amendment, and performed in depth research in support of the firm’s labor and employment practice group and with respect to a major state-wide election law issue.