Outten & Golden: The Third Avenue Firm Behind $1.3 Billion in Recoveries for Workers

Attorney Advertising. This profile is independent editorial content produced by Awesome Attorneys and is not a paid placement. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice or creates an attorney-client relationship. See our Methodology and Publisher Disclosure below.

At a Glance

Founded by	Wayne N. Outten in 1998, conceived as a firm with the resources to go toe-to-toe with the elite firms that represent America’s largest employers (per the firm)
Focus	Plaintiff-side, employee-only representation in discrimination, wage and hour, whistleblower, and executive employment matters, including nationwide class and collective actions (per the firm)
Office	685 Third Avenue, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10017 (Midtown Manhattan)
Signature results	Firm states it has recovered more than $1.3 billion for employees and prosecuted more than 500 class actions, including $320 million specifically for victims of pay discrimination (per the firm)
Distinctive edge	One of the first plaintiff-side employment firms built at institutional scale, with a dedicated Public Interest Committee that staffs pro bono and reduced-fee matters for workers who cannot otherwise afford representation (per the firm)
Fee model	Varies by matter type (contingency, hourly, and hybrid arrangements); not uniformly published, prospective clients should confirm directly
Known for	Large-scale wage and hour class actions, gender and pay-equity litigation, and executive-side contract and separation negotiations (per the firm)

In 1998, the employment law bar in New York looked almost nothing like it does today. By the firm’s own account, most lawyers who represented workers were solo practitioners or members of very small shops, going up against the labor and employment departments of the country’s largest defense firms with a fraction of the resources. Outten & Golden was built specifically to close that gap — not a boutique added onto a general practice, but a firm conceived from day one to match institutional defense firepower with institutional plaintiff-side firepower.

Origin and Background

Wayne N. Outten founded the firm in 1998 on a specific thesis: that employees deserved a law firm with the same talent, depth, and resources as the firms hired by the Fortune 500 companies they were suing. That is a deliberately institutional framing, and it shows up in how the firm has grown — not as a single-lawyer practice that added associates over time, but as a firm that built out distinct practice groups (class actions, executive representation, whistleblower, discrimination) the way a defense firm would organize by client industry. The firm states it now employs roughly 140 attorneys and professionals across three offices, a scale that is unusual among plaintiff-side employment firms, most of which remain considerably smaller.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

Outten & Golden’s core structural distinction is its Public Interest Committee, an internal body the firm states oversees its work on employment cases for low-income clients who cannot afford a lawyer, often in coordination with organizations including the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the Legal Aid Society of New York, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. That is not a marketing add-on; the firm points to specific matters it took on this basis, including representing office cleaners who worked near Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks without receiving proper overtime pay, and a case establishing that unpaid Hollywood-style internships violate minimum wage law. A firm large enough to run 500-plus class actions and still carve out dedicated public-interest capacity is structurally different from either a high-volume single-plaintiff shop or a small boutique that treats pro bono work as incidental.

Practice Areas

• Employment discrimination (race, gender, age, disability, pregnancy, national origin)
• Wage and hour class and collective actions
• Executive and professional employment contracts and separation negotiations
• Whistleblower representation (SEC, CFTC, IRS, False Claims Act, Sarbanes-Oxley)
• Pay equity and systemic discrimination litigation
• Retaliation and wrongful termination

Track Record

The firm states it has recovered more than $1.3 billion for employees and prosecuted more than 500 class actions to date, including $320 million specifically in pay-discrimination cases. Independently reportable matters include Chen-Oster v. Goldman Sachs, a gender discrimination class action that the firm represented on behalf of female financial advisors and associates, which the firm states resulted in a settlement and a nearly $1.2 million donation to organizations addressing gender inequity in the financial industry. The firm was also co-counsel in a $4.6 million wage and hour recovery for delivery and technology workers and has an active docket that includes gender pay-equity litigation against Amazon and a class action against Walmart over the use of lie-detector tests on Massachusetts job applicants. These are the firm’s own characterizations of matters and outcomes; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify every dollar figure. Past results in any matter do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.

Client Voice

Independent court opinions, rather than marketing testimonials, form the strongest third-party record of the firm’s client work. A federal magistrate judge in the Northern District of California wrote that Outten & Golden “has a proven track record in the prosecution of class actions,” and a Southern District of New York judge separately observed that the firm “enjoys a reputation as one of the outstanding firms representing plaintiffs in employment cases.” Because these are judicial characterizations made in the course of approving settlements or resolving fee disputes, they carry different weight than a marketing quote, though they were still solicited and published by the firm on its own site rather than independently verified by Awesome Attorneys against the underlying court filings.

Beyond the Courtroom

Outten & Golden’s Public Interest Committee is itself a beyond-the-courtroom commitment rather than a discrete program: the firm states it represents pro bono and reduced-fee clients on an ongoing basis, and several current partners, including class action practice co-chair Ossai Miazad, are cited in the firm’s materials as having built substantial portions of their careers around impact litigation aimed at systemic issues — criminal-history-based hiring discrimination and DACA-related employment barriers among them — rather than solely fee-generating matters.

Recognition

Chambers USA has ranked Outten & Golden in its Labor & Employment: Mainly Plaintiffs category for New York, describing the firm as “a distinguished U.S.-based law firm renowned for representing plaintiffs in labor and employment litigation,” and separately recognized the firm’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation practice. Best Lawyers has named Outten & Golden a “Best Law Firm” in Litigation – Labor & Employment and Employment Law – Individuals, and the firm states its Best Lawyers tenure dates back to 1987. New York does not maintain a formal board-certification system for employment law comparable to Texas’s TBLS, so Awesome Attorneys does not apply “specialist” language to any attorney at this firm on that basis; the credentials above are peer-review rankings, not government-conferred certifications.

New York Legal Backdrop

Employment discrimination claims in New York can generally be brought under the New York State Human Rights Law (Executive Law § 296) and the New York City Human Rights Law (NYC Administrative Code § 8-107), both broader in coverage than federal anti-discrimination statutes. Following a 2023 amendment effective February 15, 2024, most NYSHRL discrimination and retaliation claims carry a three-year statute of limitations, matching the NYCHRL’s three-year window for civil actions (NYC Admin. Code § 8-502). Wage and hour claims under the New York Labor Law generally carry a six-year statute of limitations, longer than the two-year (or three-year for willful violations) window under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. None of this is legal advice; a specific employment dispute should be evaluated by a licensed New York attorney based on the actual facts and filing deadlines involved.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Outten & Golden’s clearest differentiator is scale built specifically for plaintiff-side employment work: a firm large enough to run more than 500 class actions while still maintaining a dedicated Public Interest Committee for clients who cannot pay at all. The honest trade-off is that a firm of this size and institutional structure is not built around the kind of white-glove, single-point-of-contact relationship that a small boutique offers on a routine individual matter; an employee with a straightforward, modest severance negotiation may find a smaller firm more personally attentive and no less effective. For workers facing systemic discrimination, a large wage and hour violation, or a whistleblower matter that will likely require years of institutional-grade litigation resources, Outten & Golden’s track record and structure make it a reasonable firm to have on a shortlist.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Outten & Golden’s own website, including its firm history, by-the-numbers results page, cases and investigations pages, and attorney biographies, cross-referenced against independent coverage from Chambers USA, Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, and court opinions quoted in the firm’s own recognition materials.

Publisher Disclosure and Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Outten & Golden LLP prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any profiled firm, and inclusion in this directory is not a paid placement. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only and does not constitute a rating or ranking claim. Facts stated are current only as of this profile’s research date.

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