Atty. Marie D. DiSante

Marie DiSante is the Firm Managing Partner at CDF Labor Law LLP (CDF), a California focused labor, employment and immigration defense law firm with five offices throughout the state. An employment litigation attorney whose dual role as a California business owner and entrepreneur allows her to understand her clients’ workplace challenges firsthand, Marie DiSante has been resolving and preventing disputes for employers for 28 years. Her active leadership in the business community shapes her effective, practical and value-driven counsel to employers of all sizes, from startup ventures to Fortune 500 enterprises. After founding the firm with her partners in 1994, DiSante positioned her clients in the forefront of emerging and unprecedented class action litigation in the state, especially in wage and hour compliance cases. Her facility with introducing a strategic business view within a legal context has resulted in numerous favorable outcomes in complex employment law litigation and litigation avoidance. In one representative example, DiSante dramatically reduced the threat of five concurrent putative class actions filed by five separate sets of plaintiffs' counsel in five separate counties. Her assertive representation of her client, a national telecommunications retailer with a significant California workforce, included defending claims covering a variety of overlapping alleged wage and hour violations involving meal and rest breaks, misclassification, off-the-clock work, failure to reimburse business expenses, miscalculation of the overtime pay rate, and minimum wage issues. DiSante’s experience also includes a broad range of single-plaintiff actions, EEO compliance, personnel policy implementation, performance management and reductions-in-force counsel. Throughout her client representations, DiSante leverages her conflict resolution skills, gained in state and federal courts and alternative dispute resolution venues, to offer real-life, pragmatic approaches that foster safe, productive workplaces and prevent employee claims. At the center of her advice and counsel is a deeply held wish to add value to clients’ businesses, as well as create a rewarding workplace for employees. Ongoing education and participation in the business and legal communities are key components in DiSante’s counsel to clients. DiSante serves as a founding member of several Southern California business organizations, including the Collaboration of Professional Women (ProVisors), Orange County Law Firm Leadership Roundtable, Orange County Women Lawyers Roundtable and Women Presidents’ Organization, Orange County Chapter. DiSante also is an active member of Vistage, a CEO peer advisory group to which she has belonged for over ten years.