Union-Side.
Worker-Side.
Always.
A private firm with a public-interest mission - defending the rights of the workers who feed the world.
Our Approach
Farm workers rarely have the luxury of coming to a law office. Many work six or seven days a week, long days in the heat, and the hours they are not working are spent on everything else life requires. Groceries, family, rest. A day off is not a day free.
So we go to them.
Over the years, our attorneys and staff have met workers at their kitchen tables, in parking lots, in public parks, in libraries, in community centers, in labor camps. We have driven out to remote agricultural towns in the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Coast. We have traveled met with workers in rural Washington, Idaho, New York. We go wherever the workers we represent are, because showing up is not a courtesy we extend. It is the only way to do this work honestly.
When we sit down with a worker, we are not in a hurry to move on to the next thing. We look at pay stubs together. We go through the details of what happened. We explain what the law says and what we think we can do about it, in plain language, without shortcuts.
Every member of our staff speaks Spanish. We also have staff who speak Mixtec, because a worker should be able to tell their story in their own words, not filtered through someone else's translation. Language access is not an accommodation we offer. It is a baseline.
We practice this way because we understand what it took for someone to reach out to us in the first place. We do not take that lightly.
$25 Million and Counting
WHAT WE’VE WON FOR WORKERS
Over more than two decades, our attorneys have recovered wages for tens of thousands of farmworkers across California and the Pacific Northwest — workers who were cheated on rest periods, meal breaks, piece-rate pay, and off-the-clock time. These are some of the cases
$7.875M
~20,500 WORKERS
Aldapa v. Fowler Packing Co.
$6.1M
10,000+ WORKERS
Valenzuela v. Giumarra Vineyards
$7.325M
~40,000 WORKERS
Zeferino v. The Wonderful Co.
$5M
~6,000 WORKERS
Marquez Amaro v. Gerawan Farming
$6M
26,000+ WORKERS
Arredondo v. Delano Farms Co.
$4M
10,000+ WORKERS
Rojas v. Sunview Vineyards
Our Values
Everything we do at Martinez Aguilasocho Law is rooted in five values our team built together — not handed down from above, but forged from our shared commitment to the farmworker community and the movement that sustains it.
1. Respect and Excellent Service to Farm Workers
Farm workers are the reason this firm exists. That means treating every client with dignity, being honest about their situation, and delivering legal work at the highest level. We don't separate professionalism from humanity here. Both are required.
2. Fight for Rights — Protect, Fight, Change the Law
We take on hard cases. We challenge laws that fail workers. When we lose, we regroup and try again. Some of the most important legal work in this space hasn't happened yet, and we intend to be part of making it happen. That's not a tagline — it's just what the work requires.
3. Working in Alliance with La Causa and the Farmworker Movement
We see ourselves as part of the broader farmworker movement, not separate from it. That shapes who we partner with, which cases we take, and how we think about the role of law in social change. Legal victories matter most when they're connected to something larger.
4. Cultivating a Culture of Growth and Learning
We try to be honest with ourselves internally — about what we know, what we don't, and where we need to get better. That applies to how we train, how we communicate with clients, and how we handle mistakes. Growth isn't a perk here; it's how we stay accountable to the people we serve.
5. Impact Farmworker Rights Globally
Farm workers cross borders. Their legal rights should too. We're building toward a firm with national reach and a long-term view on international farmworker justice. That ambition is grounded in the day-to-day work, not separate from it.
Changing the Law
Some of our most important work never shows up as a dollar figure. Over the years, we have fought for and won changes to the law itself — protections that apply to every farmworker in California and beyond, not just our clients.
First-in-the-Nation Heat Standards
Working alongside the UFW, we pushed California to adopt the nation's first heat illness prevention standards in 2005. More than one million farm workers in California are protected by those rules today. Other states have since modeled their own standards on them.
Ending a 78-Year Overtime Exclusion
For nearly eight decades, California farm workers were excluded from the overtime protections every other worker in the state received — a legacy of racially discriminatory New Deal-era policy. We fought alongside the UFW to pass AB 2757, which finally brought farm workers equal overtime rights.
Washington State Overtime Rights
We filed an amicus brief on behalf of the UFW in Martínez-Cuevas v. DeRuyter Brothers Dairy, the case that brought overtime pay rights to farm workers in Washington state. We have similarly supported successful efforts in Colorado (2021) and New York (2019).
Labor Trafficking Precedent — Martínez-Rodríguez v. Giles
We argued before the Ninth Circuit that using a worker's visa status to trap them in labor they never agreed to constitutes federal forced labor and trafficking. The court agreed, reversed the district court's dismissal, and established new precedent protecting agricultural workers from visa-based fraud and coercion.
California Supreme Court — Unanimous Wins
We argued two cases before the California Supreme Court on the same day and won both unanimously. Gerawan Farming, Inc. v. ALRB and Tri-Fanucchi Farms v. ALRB (2017) strengthened farm workers' collective bargaining rights under California's Mandatory Mediation Law.
Human Trafficking Prosecution — People v. Efren Alvarez
We represented survivors in one of the first farmworker labor trafficking prosecutions in California. The case resulted in an eight-year prison sentence for the trafficker. It was one of the earliest examples of California courts treating agricultural labor trafficking as the serious crime it is.
Our Story
Mario Martinez grew up working in the fields in California. Edgar Aguilasocho grew up seeing the struggle of his farm worker family in Mexico and his blue collar family in California. Our staff are from the rural, often forgotten parts of America. We have all seen, up close and in our own families, what it looks like when working people are treated as if the law does not apply to them.
That experience is why this firm exists.
We started Martinez Aguilasocho Law in 2015 because farm workers needed serious legal representation and there were very few places to get it. The work is not easy. The cases are complex, the employers are often well-resourced, and the workers who come to us have usually already been through a lot before they walk through our door. We take that seriously.
Mario has been practicing workers' rights law since 1999. Edgar was part of the inaugural class at UCI Law and came away from that believing that the law is only worth something if it is connected to the community it is supposed to serve.
We represent individual workers, classes, and labor organizations on wage-and-hour, civil rights, and labor organizing matters. Our cases have gone before the Ninth Circuit, state supreme courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. We work with workers across California, Washington, and other states.
We are not the kind of firm that takes this work because it is convenient. We take it because we know what is at stake for the people who come to us, because there are our families and our communities.