Chelsea Dwyer Petersen

Chelsea Dwyer Petersen is a partner who focuses her practice on employment counseling and litigation with a focus on complex class action cases.

Ms. Petersen's areas of experience include proactive defense of discrimination and wage-and-hour class action cases for clients such as The Boeing Company and OfficeMax.  She has substantial experience in all phases of class cases including early strategic assessment, defeat of class certification, supervision of large scale electronic document review, oversight of expert witnesses and taking a case to trial.

She also regularly defends employers against individual discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wage-and-hour claims.  Representative clients include Microsoft and Starbucks.

As a counselor she works closely with clients to minimize the possibility of litigation by providing efficient advice regarding every-day human resources issues and creating employment handbooks and policies to keep business moving smoothly.  In particular, she counsels employers on how to comply with federal and state statutes such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Title VII, the Washington Law Against Discrimination, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Ms. Petersen frequently performs workplace investigations.  She provides training on compliance and best practices.  She also assists in the resolution of complex pre-litigation harassment and discrimination charges internally and before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and state enforcement agencies across the country.

Professional Recognition

• Washington Super Lawyers "Rising Star," 2008 - 2012

Professional Leadership

• Washington Employment Law Letter, Co-Editor
• Parent Affinity Group, Perkins Coie, Founder and Chair

Community Involvement

• Girls on the Run of Puget Sound, Board of Directors

Related Employment

• Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle, WA, Summer Associate, 2001
• King County Prosecutor’s Office, Seattle, WA, Extern, Most Dangerous Offenders Project, Summer 2000
• Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle, WA, Client Relations Coordinator, 1996 - 1999; Big Deals of Washington publication researcher, 1999 - 2002