Helm Silverman LLP
Catherine H. Helm
Cathy Helm has been a labor and employment lawyer since 1984. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and from Harvard Law School cum laude. After law school she served as a law clerk for Judge James Belson on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. She began her private practice in the labor and employment section of the litigation group at Irell & Manella, LLP, where she became a partner in 1990. She left the firm in 2001 to start a specialized practice representing independent schools, non-profit arts organizations, and other business and individual clients. For the past twenty-five years she also has been the outside labor counsel for the Los Angeles Opera, for which she handles collective bargaining, union grievance and arbitration, and employee relations work, and most of whose productions she happily attends each year.
Personal background and interests: Ms. Helm is a member of the board of trustees of the Los Angeles Opera and is currently the president of the board of a low-income elderly housing project in Los Angeles. She was chair of the board of St. James’ Episcopal Church from 2020-2022, recently completed almost a decade of service on the board of the Archer School for Girls (an independent school for grades seven through twelve), and from 1994 to 2006 was a trustee at St. James’ Episcopal School (an independent elementary school), serving as board president there from 2000 to 2004. She volunteers as the coordinator of a HopeNet food pantry. In her remaining hours she likes to read, walk the family dogs, play the flute, and make fancy desserts. She grew up in Rochester, New York. She and her husband have adult twin daughters, one of whom lives in Los Angeles and the other of whom endures constant parental pressure to move back to L.A. from New York City.
Lora Silverman
Lora Silverman has been a labor and employment lawyer since 1991. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attended Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, graduating order of the coif. Lora began her career at Irell & Manella, LLP in the labor and employment group and left in 1994 to join a boutique practice which is where she has been ever since, notwithstanding a few changes in partner configuration. For the first ten years of her law practice, Ms. Silverman was a full-time litigator, including one trial in Superior Court. From 2001 to 2006, in addition to her private law practice, Ms. Silverman served as part-time inside counsel to a Fortune Global 500 company where she provided employment law advice directly to human resources professionals and business partners. She has since focused her law practice on all matters employment-related up to the point of civil filing.
Ms. Silverman is also certified as a mediator under the California Dispute Resolution Act and has mediated cases at all phases of the dispute spectrum – from internal complaints and demand letters to agency claims and filed litigation.
Personal background and interests: Ms. Silverman was born and raised in Los Angeles. Before law school, she enjoyed a brief career in college admissions working for her alma mater. She currently sits on the Board of the Holocaust Museum, LA in Pan Pacific Park and The Gooden Center in Pasadena. In her spare time, Ms. Silverman enjoys gardening (with a focus on native and edible landscaping), reading and hobbies that require reading (such as cooking). She is a retired marathon and middle-distance runner who now exercises indoors. Ms. Silverman and her husband of 30+ years have three children and live in west L.A. with the dogs and cats the kids left behind when they went off to college.