Our Founder & CEO, Joshua White, recently sat down with Daily Journal | Cal Lawyer to talk about why he built Laurel Employment Law to run more like a tech startup than a traditional law firm.
A Different Kind of Path
Before founding Laurel, Josh spent over a decade as an executive in corporate America. He graduated near the top of his class at the UCLA School of Law, practiced complex commercial litigation in Santa Monica, and later served as Head of Strategy and General Counsel for a large multinational company. In that role, he helped grow the business into a several hundred million dollar enterprise.
That business background shaped how he approached building a law firm. Rather than following the traditional law firm playbook, Josh applied lessons from the corporate world, including strong systems, smart use of technology, and a genuine, values driven culture.
Culture, Technology, and Growth
In the interview, Josh talks about building Laurel around a positive, authentic company culture rooted in optimism and honesty. He also discusses how the firm uses data and technology in everyday legal work, allowing attorneys to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time focused on winning for clients.
Since launching in 2024, this approach has helped Laurel grow into a fully remote team of more than 30 attorneys and about 150 professionals, serving employees across California in matters involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour disputes, and wrongful termination.
Josh's perspective throughout the interview is straightforward: many of the challenges that slow down traditional law firms are really business problems, and solving them takes the same tools that innovative companies use every day.