Fitapelli & Schaffer: The Liberty Street Firm Two Former Defense Attorneys Built to Sue Their Old Clients’ Peers

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	Joseph A. Fitapelli and Brian S. Schaffer in 2008, both former defense-side employment attorneys before switching to represent workers exclusively (per the firm)
Focus	Plaintiff-side, employee-only representation concentrated in large-scale wage and hour class and collective actions, plus individual discrimination, harassment, and wrongful termination claims (per the firm)
Office	28 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10005 (Financial District, Manhattan)
Signature results	Firm cites matters including a $15.6 million award for personal bankers at a national bank, $4.2 million for exotic dancers at NYC gentlemen’s clubs, and nearly $3 million for tipped restaurant workers (per the firm)
Distinctive edge	A boutique built by two attorneys who spent their early careers on the defense side, giving the firm direct insight into how large employers and their outside counsel evaluate and resist wage claims (per the firm)
Fee model	Contingency for most wage and hour and individual claims (not published in full; prospective clients should confirm directly)
Known for	Large corporate wage and hour class actions against national brands including Bank of America, HSBC, KPMG, and Target (per the firm)

Joseph A. Fitapelli and Brian S. Schaffer did not start their careers representing workers. Both practiced as defense attorneys before founding Fitapelli & Schaffer in 2008 to represent employees exclusively — a switch that puts them in the same category as several of the more credible plaintiff-side founders in the city, whose knowledge of how the other side builds a defense came from having built one themselves.

Origin and Background

The firm states plainly that its founders were “former defense attorneys” before launching a boutique dedicated to large-scale wage and hour claims. That is a specific, checkable biographical detail rather than a generic origin story, and it shapes how the firm pitches itself: not as a general employment practice that happens to take wage claims, but as a firm built specifically around the mechanics of class and collective wage litigation, the area where Fitapelli and Schaffer had spent their defense-side years. The firm has operated from the Financial District, near the New York Stock Exchange, since its founding, a location the firm’s own materials note is intentional given how much of its client base commutes through or works in Lower Manhattan.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

Fitapelli & Schaffer is not a volume individual-claims shop; the firm’s own description of its work centers on “large scale class and collective wage and hour claims,” and its cited matters — personal bankers at a national bank, restaurant workers across multiple locations, retail employees — are systematically structured group claims rather than one-off disputes. The firm states it has taken on some of the largest corporations in the country, including Bank of America, HSBC, KPMG, and Target, a client list that reads like a roster the firm’s founders would have once defended rather than sued.

Practice Areas

• Wage and hour class and collective actions (unpaid overtime, minimum wage, tip violations)
• Failure to pay commissions
• Employment discrimination (race, gender, age)
• Sexual harassment
• Wrongful termination and retaliation
• Severance negotiations

Track Record

The firm cites a $15.6 million award on behalf of personal bankers at a national financial institution, $4.2 million recovered for exotic dancers at New York City gentlemen’s clubs who alleged unpaid minimum wage and unlawfully retained tips, and nearly $3 million for tipped restaurant workers across a multi-location Mexican restaurant chain. The firm also states it recovered unpaid overtime for loan officers at a national bank operating hundreds of branches, and separately obtained damages under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for recipients of unwanted promotional text messages from a clothing retailer. 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

Client reviews aggregated on third-party platforms describe the firm’s attorneys as, in one client’s words, “super communicative and attentive” throughout a case, and a Yelp reviewer separately described a founding partner as “part lawyer, part big brother” during a mediation. Fitapelli & Schaffer carries a 4.3-star aggregate rating across dozens of publicly posted reviews on third-party platforms, a middling-to-strong score that Awesome Attorneys reports as-is rather than rounding up, consistent with disclosing the full record rather than only the most favorable excerpts.

Beyond the Courtroom

The firm’s attorneys are regular Super Lawyers and Rising Stars honorees, with co-founder Joseph Fitapelli named to the Super Lawyers list every year from 2012 through 2017 after an earlier Rising Star selection in 2011, and firm attorneys Frank Mazzaferro and Armando Ortiz more recently named Rising Stars, per the firm’s own recognition page. The firm states its cases have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Law Journal, and on national television outlets including MSNBC and CNN.

Recognition

Fitapelli & Schaffer has been named to the Super Lawyers list for multiple consecutive years, per the firm, and individual attorneys hold Super Lawyers and Rising Stars distinctions. One older Super Lawyers biography for co-founder Joseph Fitapelli describes him as representing “individual employees, executives and companies,” language that is broader than the firm’s current, consistently repeated description of itself as representing employees exclusively; Awesome Attorneys flags that discrepancy here rather than silently resolving it in the firm’s favor, since the current firm materials are the more authoritative and more recently updated source. 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.

New York Legal Backdrop

Wage and hour claims in New York can generally be brought under Article 6 of the New York Labor Law, which carries a six-year statute of limitations — considerably longer than the two-year (or three-year for willful violations) window under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Employment discrimination and harassment claims fall separately 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 carrying a three-year statute of limitations following a 2023 amendment effective February 15, 2024 (NYC Admin. Code § 8-502). None of this is legal advice; a specific wage or discrimination claim should be evaluated by a licensed New York attorney based on the actual facts and filing deadlines involved.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Fitapelli & Schaffer’s clearest differentiator is founders who spent their early careers on the defense side of exactly the wage and hour claims they now bring, concentrated in large, systematic class and collective actions against major national employers rather than scattered individual disputes. The honest trade-off is that a firm built around large-scale group wage claims is not necessarily structured for the kind of highly individualized, white-glove attention a single-plaintiff executive or discrimination client might want; the firm’s own signature results are almost entirely class-wide recoveries rather than single-client outcomes, and its aggregate review score, while solid, is not the highest among comparable NYC boutiques. For a worker who believes an employer’s wage practices affected an entire class of coworkers — not just themselves — Fitapelli & Schaffer’s specific track record in that exact type of case makes it a reasonable firm to have on a shortlist.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Fitapelli & Schaffer’s own website (fslawfirm.com), including its practice, results, and Super Lawyers pages, cross-referenced against Super Lawyers attorney profiles, Yelp and Trustindex aggregated client reviews, and Martindale-Hubbell’s firm listing.

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 Fitapelli & Schaffer, 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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