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Wage and Hour Firm: A Published Federal Case Behind the Name

Most firm names in this category describe a practice area in general terms. This one is literal: Wage and Hour Firm, founded by Rick Prieto and Melinda Arbuckle, devotes its entire practice to unpaid wage and overtime claims for employees, with a real, citable result to back it up — Meadows v. Latshaw Drilling Co., LLC, 338 F. Supp. 3d 587 (N.D. Tex. 2018), a published federal decision recovering unpaid overtime for a class of oilfield workers. For anyone comparing options among this Dallas employment lawyer directory who specifically has an unpaid-wage issue, that kind of subject-matter focus is worth noting.

At a Glance: This Dallas Wage and Hour Firm’s Credentials

I. A Firm Named for Its Specialty

Rick Prieto is Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and, per the firm’s own materials, devotes his entire practice to employment matters. He is fluent in Spanish, a practical asset for a Dallas-area wage-and-hour practice. Melinda Arbuckle began her legal career as a federal law clerk for Judge W. Royal Furgeson in the Northern District of Texas, then worked at a plaintiff-side firm in Dallas before becoming a partner at a Houston employment boutique, and eventually co-founded Wage and Hour Firm with Prieto. Arbuckle’s own materials state she has represented hundreds of thousands of employees in wage claims over her career, largely through class and collective actions.

II. A Genuinely Narrow, Employee-Only Focus

The firm’s own site states plainly that its practice is exclusively devoted to employment law, representing employees rather than employers. This isn’t a general employment boutique that happens to do wage work — the firm’s entire structure, from its name to its marketing, centers on unpaid wages, overtime, and minimum wage violations, litigated in both individual and class or collective action formats.

III. Practice Concentration

Beyond wage and hour claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the firm represents employees in matters arising under Title VII, the ADEA, the ADA, the FMLA, and the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act. The firm has represented employees before the EEOC, the Texas Workforce Commission, and the U.S. Department of Labor, and litigates in both state and federal trial and appellate courts.

IV. Track Record

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Case results depend on the specific facts and evidence in each matter.

The firm’s most independently verifiable result is Meadows v. Latshaw Drilling Co., LLC, 338 F. Supp. 3d 587 (N.D. Tex. 2018), a published federal district court decision in which Arbuckle was part of the trial team representing a class of oilfield rig workers who successfully recovered back overtime pay after their employer miscalculated overtime rates by excluding nondiscretionary bonuses and per diem payments from the regular rate calculation. Separately, the firm’s own materials describe a 2015 matter in which Prieto represented two exotic dancers in a Fair Labor Standards Act claim, recovering back wages, misappropriated tips, and house fees the employer had improperly charged — an example of the firm applying wage-and-hour law to a workforce not always associated with formal employment protections. Beyond these two matters, Awesome Attorneys was unable to independently verify additional specific settlement figures; that gap is disclosed here rather than filled with estimates.

V. Client Voice

Client accounts published on legal-directory sites describe employees who came to the firm after discovering wage discrepancies at large employers. One reviewer described contacting the firm out of desperation after discovering their employer had deducted lunch breaks they never actually took, and said Prieto did a marvelous job and communicated every step of the way. Awesome Attorneys did not locate an aggregated third-party star rating (Google, Avvo, or similar) for the firm during this research.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

Arbuckle’s clerkship for a sitting federal judge in the Northern District of Texas, followed by plaintiff-side work in both Dallas and Houston before co-founding this firm, reflects a career built specifically around wage-and-hour litigation rather than general employment practice. Prieto has spoken publicly about deliberately keeping the firm’s caseload manageable rather than scaling into a high-volume model, referring out cases the firm doesn’t have capacity to handle well rather than taking on more than it can serve.

VII. Recognition

Peer-reviewed and independently conferred credentials: Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification in Labor and Employment Law for Prieto; Super Lawyers Rising Star selection for Prieto from 2014 through 2018, followed by full Super Lawyers selection; and a Super Lawyers listing for Arbuckle in Employment & Labor. Awesome Attorneys did not identify any marketing-program-only awards (pay-to-play recognition lists) claimed by this firm.

VIII. The Texas Legal Backdrop

The firm’s core practice runs through the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which generally carries a two-year statute of limitations for unpaid wage and overtime claims, extended to three years for willful violations. A recurring issue in the firm’s reported work — miscalculating the “regular rate” of pay by excluding bonuses or per diem payments, as in the Latshaw Drilling case — is a common and often overlooked FLSA violation, since federal law requires nondiscretionary bonuses to be factored into overtime calculations. Texas’s own wage-payment statute, the Texas Payday Act (Texas Labor Code Chapter 61), provides a separate, state-level avenue for certain wage disputes, administered through the Texas Workforce Commission.

IX. Awesome Attorneys Assessment: This Dallas Wage and Hour Firm’s Strengths and Limits

Wage and Hour Firm’s central strength is genuine subject-matter focus: a board-certified attorney and a federal law clerk-turned-plaintiff-attorney who have built their entire practice, and their firm’s name, around one specific and often misunderstood area of employment law. The Latshaw Drilling case is a real, independently verifiable class-action result — a stronger form of evidence than firm-reported settlement figures alone.

The honest limitation is breadth: readers with discrimination, harassment, or executive-contract disputes outside the wage-and-hour space may be better served by a more general employment boutique elsewhere in this category. Awesome Attorneys also did not locate an aggregated third-party review platform rating for this firm, which is a gap relative to some other profiles in this category that have a larger visible review base.

X. Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was compiled from Wage and Hour Firm’s own website (wageandhourfirm.com), including its About Us and attorney biography pages; Super Lawyers’ attorney profiles for both Prieto and Arbuckle; the published federal court decision in Meadows v. Latshaw Drilling Co., LLC, 338 F. Supp. 3d 587 (N.D. Tex. 2018); the State Bar of Texas attorney directory; and client accounts published on AttorneyAtLaw.com. No case results, credentials, or quotes were invented; where independent third-party verification was not available, that gap is disclosed rather than filled.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Wage and Hour Firm prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placements clearly labeled as such, but no payment of any kind determines inclusion in, or the content of, this editorial profile. This article is for informational purposes only, does not constitute legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and Wage and Hour Firm or Awesome Attorneys.