Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Namal Tantula obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley with honors in 2003. She proceeded to graduate with a Juris Doctorate from the Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley in 2006. Upon passing the bar exam at age 24, Namal was amongst the youngest one percent of all attorneys in California.
During her time as an undergraduate at Berkeley, Namal not only made the Dean’s List, but also joined the Golden Key International Honors Society and Psi Chi, Psychology Honors Society. In addition to these academic honors, Namal was an active member in her community. She was the founder and co-president of the Sri Lankan Student’s Association, which serves as a means of staying in touch with the Sri Lankan community, culture, and news.
Namal was active in the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Domestic Violence Project, for which she drafted over 200 declarations for domestic violence victims to obtain temporary restraining orders against their abusers. Namal’s outstanding academic performance and community outreach also permeated her time at law school. During this period, Namal’s role as a profound resource to survivors of domestic violence continued. She assisted low-income survivors in navigating the legal system, with regard to family law actions as well as instructed free family law clinics. These clinics included classes about custody rights and divorce, in regards to child support.
Following completion of law school, Namal has accomplished a great deal in her field. She has worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies, conducted extensive research and taken on numerous depositions. Namal has most recently partnered with Fox Rothschild, where her abilities have flourished. She is the only Sri Lankan out of the firm’s five hundred and fifty attorneys, and the second youngest attorney in the firm’s California office. As a member of the firm’s Labor and Employment Department, Namal’s primary focus remains on labor and employment matters.
In the past five years with the firm, Namal has successfully defeated numerous class actions suits. Amongst these victories are three enormous class actions, in which Namal saved her clients over 1.2 billions dollars. Namal has, in fact, successfully resolved every single case she has worked on, and usually in less than one year. In addition to this, she has also never lost a motion for summary judgment or a request for a court to dismiss a lawsuit. In addition to these accomplishments, Namal has established a new law, appearing in the California Court of Appeals as a published opinion. The standard age for discrimination lawsuits in California has been changed as a result of Namal’s work in the field. Her work has been presented in the Daily Journal, and has been repeatedly featured in “California Update Unemployment Law Newsletter.”
Namal is currently the head of the Associates Committee in the San Francisco office of her firm. She is also a member of the South Asian Bar Association, The Bar Association of San Francisco, and of the Sri Lankan Young Professionals Association in San Francisco. Additionally, she is involved with a firm-wide project that plants trees in disadvantaged communities.
Currently, Namal is working on a multitude of projects, including a five million dollar wage and hour class action suit for one of Los Angeles’s premier transportation companies. For one of America’s largest party supply stores, Namal is handling six class actions with damages in the billions.
While Namal has extensive experience in defending Fortune 500 companies against class action suits, she truly enjoys working with smaller employers. She finds providing advice and counsel— to prevent any future lawsuits— very rewarding. Namal is a member of the board of directors for Futureland Montessori School, Inc., where she assists with legal, business, and other recommendations. She is extremely well traveled, having been to more than twenty-five countries across five continents. She currently resides in the Valley with her husband and infant daughter.
