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Full Legal Menu For BJ’s Miller

Eight years ago, Kendra Miller went from specialist—in labor and employment matters—to a generalist and hasn’t looked back.

Miller, executive vice president and general counsel of BJ’s Restaurants Inc. (Nasdaq: BJRI), joined the firm eight-and-a-half years ago as the company’s first general counsel, heading legal at the organization which at the time had about 100 locations across the country.

The company—currently valued at about $1.1 billion—would go on to double in size to now more than 200 restaurants across 28 states and revenue of more than $1 billion. It’s the No. 3 restaurant chain based in Orange County by sales.

Miller, who received her bachelor of arts in government from Dartmouth College and her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, prior to joining the restaurant chain served as a partner at Crowell & Moring LLP as part of the firm’s labor and employment department. She spent nearly three years there focused on everything from wage-and-hour violations and wrongful termination to discrimination and sexual harassment allegations before making the jump in-house, “embarking on a role that took me far afield from my work as an employment defense attorney,” she told the crowd of about 500 during the Business Journal’s General Counsel Awards dinner on Nov. 13.

Miller was one of five honorees at the event held at Hotel Irvine, and was named Outstanding GC of a Public Company (see stories on the other winners, pages 1, 4, 6, and 8).

Training, Career Advancement

Miller’s caseload includes patent infringement litigation, product liability issues, real estate leasing, employee issues and liquor licenses.

Among the raft of initiatives Miller has spearheaded more recently are a BJ’s Enlightened Living Wellbeing Program, BJ’s Women’s Career Advancement Network, and employee training programs designed to reduce turnover and litigation rates.

The executive in January was elevated from the senior vice president to executive vice president position for her work.

“The company is way more than pizza, beer and our delicious Pizookie dessert, trademarked by Knobbe Martens,” Miller said, bringing some chuckles from the room full of mostly lawyers.

“She is a brilliant and talented lawyer,” said Knobbe Martens General Counsel Wendy Peterson, a past GC award winner.

“That is an extremely large company for basically one lawyer to have to advise that number of employees on multiple issues at any given moment. They have so many restaurants and employees. Typically for that large a company you might see a legal department of, say, five to 10 lawyers at least, and she pretty much has one real estate lawyer. But, aside from that, she’s handling everything else.”

Peterson first met Miller in 2005 at a networking group with the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce.

“That’s how we became friends and it’s delightful to see how her career has taken off,” Peterson said. “It’s really difficult to go from being an employment lawyer to handling everything for a company. She had to learn the job and grow in her legal skills and to expand them. And she’s done that very well.”

Continuing to learn is something that’s been engrained in Miller from the start. Her parents, both public school educators, instilled in her the importance of education.

Miller said of her parents: “They taught me the value of education and also taught me that there’s no greater privilege than to have a career that allows you to be in service to others and to both teach and learn every day.”

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