Duane Morris LLP

Partner

Jennifer A. Riley, Vice Chair of Duane Morris’ Class Action Defense Team, has defended companies faced with significant complex litigation matters for more than 25 years. Ms. Riley regularly defends companies facing complex representative actions, including class actions, collective actions, pattern or practice lawsuits, and other types of representative proceedings, across substantive areas of law, ranging in size from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of claimants. Working on the forefront of the developing law in an ever-changing arena, Ms. Riley regularly develops strategies for navigating some of the largest challenges faced by corporate America today. She regularly develops strategies and plans for defending these cases by fracturing them at the pleading stage, limiting discovery, defeating class certification, prevailing on the merits, and developing off-ramps to continued litigation.

Ms. Riley develops and employs novel approaches to navigate and to defend complex actions from their inception, including strategies to fracture large-scale actions and/or to structure creative solutions. She has represented clients facing bet-the-company cases in a wide range of complex civil litigation matters in federal and state courts across the country. Ms. Riley defended a nationwide restaurant chain against one of the largest class and collective actions ever filed in the Southern District of New York alleging wage & hour violations on behalf of a nationwide collective action and at least a dozen Rule 23 state law classes. Ms. Riley defended multiple international staffing and logistics companies faced with nationwide claims for alleged misclassification and failure to pay overtime to various categories of workers across hundreds of work locations. Ms. Riley defended myriad employers against allegations of nationwide pattern or practice discrimination based on membership in various protected categories challenging their various hiring, promotion, and employment practices.

Ms. Riley has served as trial counsel in federal court bench trials, jury trials and arbitration proceedings. Ms. Riley has defended a multitude of actions by securing dismissal, defeating class or collective action certification, prevailing on summary judgment, and structuring and securing approval of complex and multiparty settlements and consent decrees. She also provides counsel to employers seeking to navigate thorny issues, including investigations, compliance, and terminations.

Ms. Riley is a regular speaker, author, and presenter regarding class action issues, legal developments, and challenges that companies may face in the future. She is an editor and author of the Duane Morris Class Action Review, a one-of-its-kind annual report that analyzes developments across all areas of class action litigation. The Review has been profiled in media publications internationally and cited in court rulings and briefs. Ms. Riley also serves as a host of The Class Action Weekly Wire podcast and editor of the Duane Morris Class Action Defense Blog. Ms. Riley was ranked the number one author in the Data Protection category for Mondaq’s Spring 2025 Thought Leadership Awards. In 2025, Ms. Riley was named an “Employment MVP” by Law360, indicative of being among the top five employment lawyers in the U.S.

Prior to joining Duane Morris LLP, in addition to her commercial litigation experience at one of the nation’s largest law firms, Ms. Riley was in-house counsel for a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical and medical device company where she investigated, managed, and resolved a wide range of commercial and employment disputes.