Jessica E. Harris

Jessica E. Harris

Partner

Jessica Harris has devoted her career to representing working people and unions. She joined Gladstein, Reif & Meginniss in 2016, following a two-year clerkship with the Honorable Janet Bond Arterton, United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut.

Over the last decade, Ms. Harris has successfully litigated numerous wage and hour, civil rights, and employment discrimination cases, including class and collective actions, before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), New York City Human Rights Commission, New York State Division of Human Rights, and in state and federal court, securing millions of dollars in damages for her clients.

She also represents public and private sector unions in collective bargaining, as well as in proceedings before arbitrators, the National Labor Relations Board, the New York State Public Employment Relations Board, and state and federal courts.

In addition, Ms. Harris represents faculty members in tenure, promotion, EEO, and disciplinary matters, as well as in litigation, and she regularly negotiates severance agreements on behalf of individual employees to obtain the best possible outcomes for them.

While in law school, Ms. Harris served as a technical editor for the Harvard Law School Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Journal and wrote for the labor and employment blog OnLabor.org, drafting explainers and news articles about notable developments in labor and employment law. Ms. Harris also worked as a law clerk for Service Employees International Union at both its international office in Washington, D.C. and Local 615 in Boston, including as a Peggy Browning Fund fellow.

Before law school, Ms. Harris drafted labor and arbitration awards for a labor arbitrator and served as the Project Coordinator for Stanford and Columbia Universities’ Parliamentary Scorecard Project in Kampala, Uganda.

  • Labor union representation
  • Wage and hour litigation
  • Civil rights and employment discrimination
  • Higher education
  • Separation agreements and severance negotiations
  • Class and collective action litigation
  • Collective bargaining negotiations
  • Harvard Law School, cum laude, J.D. 2014
  • Yale University, magna cum laude, B.A. 2008
  • New York
  • New Jersey
  • U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey
  • Second Circuit Court of Appeals
  • Third Circuit Court of Appeals
  • D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals
  • Super Lawyers New York Metro Rising Star (2022 – 2025)
  • Peggy Browning Fund Fellow (SEIU)
  • Harvard Law School Ames Moot Court Competition Best Appellee Brief Award
  • Harvard Law School Dean’s Scholar Prize (2x Recipient)
  • Yale University Frank M. Patterson Grant, Tristan Perlroth Award and Richter Fellowship