About Kevin D. Chaffin, Esq.

Trial Lawyer. Former Public-Company General Counsel. Both Sides of the Table.

22 Trials & Arbitrations — 21 Wins, 1 Loss.

No Jury Trial Losses. No Arbitration Losses.

Kevin Chaffin, founder of Chaffin Law Group PC, represents businesses, executives, founders, and owners in high-stakes disputes — the kind that are handled as litigation, not as an administrative process, and where the outcome matters.

Record

His record is not built on volume. It is built on trying cases — winning jury trials, winning arbitrations, and litigating or negotiating in a way that leaves the other side no option but to avoid trial.

Jury verdicts, arbitration awards, and negotiated resolutions across employment, business, and high-exposure civil litigation — on both sides of the table. Plaintiff and defense. Individual and institution. Employee and employer. Founder and company.

Both Sides Of The Table

A rare perspective from both sides of the table.

Kevin has advised CEOs, boards, and executive leadership teams from inside a publicly traded company. He has also represented executives, officers, owners, and business principals in disputes against the institutions they helped build.

Most trial lawyers have never sat in a C-suite. Most in-house counsel have never tried a case to verdict. He has done both.

He knows how companies make decisions under pressure — what makes them settle, what makes them fight, and how opposing counsel is thinking when they walk into the room.

That is not a positioning statement. It is a 29-year documented pattern of behavior.

Practice Focus

This is a strategic, not volume, practice.

Kevin represents private companies, founders, executives, shareholders, LLC members, and high-level individuals in high-stakes disputes involving control, valuation, leverage, and risk — what the company is worth, who controls it, and what the documents actually say.

These matters include executive compensation and separation disputes, partnership and shareholder conflicts, business divorce, trade secret and fiduciary duty litigation, and high-exposure employment disputes. Many move quickly. Some require immediate injunctive relief. All require a trial lawyer prepared to carry the case through, not paper it and wait for a discount resolution.

Select Plaintiff-Side Matters

Kevin also represents executives, founders, business principals and individual employees in select plaintiff-side matters where the claims are high-value and the economics justify it.

These are not volume contingency cases. They are strategic disputes involving equity, control, compensation, or reputational harm — often against well-funded adversaries.

In appropriate cases, the firm structures hybrid or success-aligned fee arrangements. The client in those matters is often equity-rich or claim-rich, but without the capital to outlast a prolonged war of attrition. The case must be worth bringing, and worth trying.

General Counsel Experience

Kevin served as General Counsel and a member of the executive leadership team of a publicly traded company (The Shyft Group, NASDAQ: SHYF).

He directed nationwide employment practices across 13 states for a workforce of more than 3,000 employees, managed litigation and regulatory exposure, and advised the board and executive leadership through acquisitions, growth, and high-risk decision-making.

He has been the decision-maker in the room — not just the lawyer advising from the outside. When retained in a dispute today, he is not learning how companies evaluate risk. He already knows.

Origin

Kevin was born in Santa Paula, California — the town where the California oil industry was born — and grew up in Ventura County as the fourth generation of a family that worked the oil fields.

He rode the leases with his grandfather and father as a kid. Swept warehouse floors. Counted inventory. Worked the line at fourteen. Took over his grandfather’s supply route at seventeen, driving across the oil fields carrying pipe or a surfboard depending on the day.

He also wrestled.

Wrestling taught him something that has defined everything since: when the whistle blows, it is just you and the other person. No teammates. No excuses. Six minutes. Win or lose.

That understanding — that some things are yours to win or lose alone — runs through everything he has done since.

Trial Practice And Experience

Kevin has tried cases to verdict and award before juries and judges, and has handled more than 100 arbitration matters before AAA, JAMS, and Judicate West.

His work has included employment litigation, sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, wage & hour partnership and ownership disputes, business divorce, trade secret claims, fiduciary duty litigation, high-stakes commercial matters, PAGA actions and class actions.

His cases have drawn national attention, including coverage on ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and in the New York Times and other major publications.

He has also challenged the State of California in federal court, recovered damages exceeding statutory limits in high-profile litigation, and negotiated major commercial agreements with national and international corporate institutions.

Education And Admissions

• Pepperdine University School of Law — J.D., cum laude
• Pepperdine Law Review
• American Jurisprudence Award, Civil Procedure
• Admitted to practice in California, the Supreme Court of the United States, and federal courts including the Ninth Circuit.

KEVIN D. CHAFFIN

Not a category of lawyer. Not a practice area description.

A trial lawyer — the kind who carries a client’s case through to verdict or resolution, and who has been inside the room on both sides of the fight, inside and outside C-Suite. That is the practice.