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At a Glance
| Founded by | Susan Crumiller in 2015–2016, after her own employer moved to cancel her maternity leave months before its scheduled end (per the firm) |
| Focus | Plaintiff-side, employee-only representation concentrated in gender and pregnancy discrimination, with an expanded practice covering race and disability discrimination, sexual harassment, and workplace sexual abuse (per the firm) |
| Office | 16 Court Street, Suite 2500, Brooklyn, NY 11241 |
| Signature results | Firm states it won an $11.25 million jury verdict on behalf of a Black fitness professional subjected to a hostile work environment and unlawfully fired by Equinox (per the firm) |
| Distinctive edge | Branded and operated explicitly as “The Feminist Litigation Firm,” built by a founder who was herself a discrimination client before becoming a discrimination lawyer (per the firm) |
| Fee model | Contingency for employment matters (not published in full; prospective clients should confirm directly) |
| Known for | Pregnancy and caregiver discrimination litigation, high-profile jury verdicts, and a parallel practice pursuing sexual abuse claims in healthcare and institutional settings (per the firm) |
Susan Crumiller did not set out to build a discrimination law firm. She was a trial attorney at another firm when her own employer tried to cut short her maternity leave, months before it was scheduled to end. Rather than accept it, she left and started a firm devoted to pregnancy rights — a founding story that is unusually specific among New York employment boutiques, most of which trace their origin to a founder’s general career pivot rather than to a discrimination claim the founder herself experienced.
Origin and Background
Crumiller graduated from NYU School of Law in 2006 and spent nearly a decade as a trial attorney representing individuals against corporations before founding her own firm in 2015 or 2016, depending on the source (Chambers cites 2015; the firm’s own Yelp listing cites a January 2016 launch). By her own account, in an interview with Lawdragon, she described the moment plainly: her prior firm’s leadership wanted to cancel her maternity leave months early, and rather than fight that battle as an employee, she “left her previous firm and began a law firm devoted to pregnancy rights.” The firm has since broadened its docket well beyond pregnancy discrimination into race and disability discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse litigation, but pregnancy and caregiver rights remain the practice’s founding and most closely identified specialty.
What Makes This Firm Structurally Different
Crumiller brands itself, without qualification, as “The Feminist Litigation Firm” — not a marketing tagline layered onto a general practice, but a stated organizing principle that shapes which cases the firm takes. The firm has litigated one of the first cases to sue for medical malpractice on the basis of race discrimination in maternal healthcare, and separately co-founded the Survivors Law Project with attorney Carrie Goldberg to represent adult survivors of sexual assault under New York’s Adult Survivors Act lookback window. That combination — employment discrimination litigation and a parallel, values-driven sexual abuse and reproductive-justice docket under one roof — is a distinctive structural choice rather than a byproduct of firm size.
Practice Areas
- Pregnancy and caregiver discrimination
- Gender discrimination
- Race and disability discrimination
- Sexual harassment and workplace sexual abuse
- Severance and separation negotiations
- Sexual assault and gender-based violence litigation (including non-employment matters)
Track Record
The firm states it won an $11.25 million jury verdict on behalf of Röbynn Europe, a Black fitness professional who the firm says was subjected to a hostile work environment at Equinox and unlawfully fired because of her race and gender. The firm is also currently pursuing a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, alleging the department retaliated against a client after she reported being raped by a fellow officer, and is representing more than a dozen women in a proposed class action against a physician the firm alleges sexually assaulted patients over a period of decades. The firm’s own materials describe negotiating “seven-figure settlements for clients in the financial industry” in addition to its litigated verdicts. These are the firm’s own characterizations of matters and outcomes; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify every dollar figure against court dockets. Past results in any matter do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.
Client Voice
A client quoted on the firm’s own site described Crumiller as “highly supportive” and said the firm “kept pushing my workplace to a better settlement.” A separate Avvo reviewer, describing a case handled on referral, wrote that after being turned away by another firm’s principal counsel, “we received a call from Susan, personally, merely a few hours later,” and credited her “demeanor with her clients, candor, and insight into the laws applicable to our case” with easing the family’s fear going into the matter. These are consistent with the firm’s client-facing brand of personal, founder-level attention rather than a delegated intake process, though Awesome Attorneys notes they are firm-published or platform-hosted testimonials rather than independently verified accounts.
Beyond the Courtroom
Susan Crumiller testified before the New York City Commission on Human Rights at a hearing on pregnancy and caregiver discrimination, and later delivered a continuing legal education presentation on pregnancy and caregiver rights hosted by the New York County Lawyers Association, according to the firm’s own news page. She has also been a guest on legal-industry podcasts and was profiled jointly with Carrie Goldberg by The National Law Journal on their collaboration through the Survivors Law Project.
Recognition
Chambers USA named Crumiller P.C. a Spotlight firm for 2025 and 2026, describing the firm as specializing in representing plaintiffs in high-profile discrimination and sexual misconduct matters with particular strength in pregnancy discrimination. Crumiller carries a 4.8-star client review average on Martindale-Hubbell across dozens of reviews, per that platform’s own listing. 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 directory and peer-review recognitions, not government-conferred certifications.
New York Legal Backdrop
Pregnancy, gender, and other 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). Separately, New York’s Adult Survivors Act opened a temporary lookback window for certain time-barred sexual assault civil claims; that window has since closed under the statute’s own terms, and any sexual-abuse-related claim should be evaluated against current, applicable deadlines by a licensed attorney. None of this is legal advice; a specific claim should be evaluated by a licensed New York attorney based on the actual facts and filing deadlines involved.
Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Crumiller’s clearest differentiator is a founder whose own experience with a canceled maternity leave shaped a firm built explicitly around pregnancy, caregiver, and gender discrimination, later expanded into an unusually direct combination of employment litigation and sexual-abuse survivor representation under one brand. The honest trade-off is that a firm this closely identified with a founder’s personal mission and public voice is, by structure, a smaller boutique than the larger institutional plaintiff-side firms in the market; a client whose priority is the deepest possible bench of attorneys and support staff across every employment sub-specialty may be better served by a larger shop. For an employee who wants a firm with a specific, well-documented track record in pregnancy and gender discrimination and a founder personally engaged in the case, Crumiller is a reasonable one to have on a shortlist.
Methodology and Sourcing
This profile was researched from Crumiller’s own website (crumiller.com), including its employment law, results, and news pages, cross-referenced against Susan Crumiller’s Lawdragon lawyer-limelight interview, Chambers USA’s Spotlight profile of the firm, and Martindale-Hubbell and Avvo attorney listings.
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 Crumiller P.C. 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.