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Forester Haynie PLLC: A Nationwide Wage-and-Hour Practice Built From a Dallas Playground Rivalry

Jay Forester and Matthew Haynie built a national wage-and-hour class action practice from a single Dallas office on North St. Paul Street. Unlike the board-certified employment boutiques elsewhere in this Dallas employment lawyer directory, Forester Haynie’s employment work sits inside a broader plaintiff’s litigation practice that also includes personal injury and mass tort cases — a structure worth understanding before comparing it directly to single-focus employment firms.

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

I. Two SMU Law Graduates and a Wage-and-Hour Docket

Jay Forester, a fourth-generation SMU graduate who holds his J.D. from SMU’s Dedman School of Law, describes his path into law as rooted in an instinct for taking on “the biggest bullies” that goes back to childhood in Dallas. A former policy debate champion, he now oversees Forester Haynie’s wage-and-hour practice and litigates Fair Labor Standards Act cases nationwide. Matthew Haynie, also an SMU Dedman Law graduate, was admitted to the Texas bar in 2013 and co-leads the firm alongside Forester, with a docket that spans class action and mass tort work in addition to individual and collective employment claims.

II. Practice Concentration

The firm’s wage-and-hour work centers on unpaid overtime and minimum-wage claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act, frequently brought as FLSA collective actions on behalf of groups of similarly situated workers — misclassified assistant managers, tipped workers such as delivery drivers, and hourly employees denied compensation for off-the-clock work. Super Lawyers separately classifies Matthew Haynie’s practice as spanning Class Action/Mass Torts (Plaintiff), Employment & Labor (Employee), Employment Litigation (Plaintiff), and Personal Injury (Plaintiff, both general and products) — reflecting a firm built around plaintiff-side litigation broadly rather than employment law as a standalone specialty.

III. A Currently Active Case as an Illustration

As one example of the firm’s active docket, Forester Haynie and co-counsel firm Shellist | Lazarz | Slobin filed an FLSA collective and class action against Universal Protection Service (operating as Allied Universal Security Services), alleging the company failed to properly record hours and pay overtime to hourly security guards who frequently worked more than 40 hours per week. Awesome Attorneys is citing this as a representative example of the firm’s current wage-and-hour litigation rather than as a resolved result; the case’s outcome was not confirmed as part of this profile’s research.

IV. Track Record

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Class and collective action settlements are frequently subject to court approval and confidentiality terms that limit public reporting of specific figures.

Forester Haynie’s public materials describe an active nationwide docket of FLSA collective actions but do not publish an itemized table of settlement or verdict amounts. Awesome Attorneys was unable to independently verify specific dollar recoveries for the firm’s wage-and-hour practice and is disclosing that gap directly. This is a structural limitation common to class and collective wage litigation, where settlements often require court approval and may be subject to confidentiality provisions, rather than necessarily reflecting a lack of results.

V. Client Voice

The firm’s own website features client testimonials praising responsiveness and staff professionalism, including specific mentions of staff members Victor Martinez and Kristin Rollins by name, along with attorneys Matthew VanFleet and Matthew Haynie. Awesome Attorneys did not locate an independent, aggregated third-party review score (Google, Avvo, or similar) for the firm specifically as of this profile’s research; the visible reviews are firm-published testimonials rather than independently verified aggregate ratings.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

Matthew Haynie has been named to Super Lawyers’ Rising Stars list every year from 2019 through 2026 — an eight-year consecutive run. The firm maintains active admissions across all four U.S. District Courts in Texas as well as federal district courts in multiple other states, reflecting the nationwide scope of its wage-and-hour collective action practice, which frequently spans state lines when litigating against multi-state employers.

VII. Recognition

Peer-reviewed and independently conferred credentials: Super Lawyers Rising Stars selection for Matthew Haynie (2019–2026, Class Action/Mass Torts). Awesome Attorneys did not identify Best Lawyers recognition, Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification, or any marketing-program-only awards claimed by this firm during this research.

VIII. The Texas Legal Backdrop

The firm’s core wage-and-hour work runs through the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which generally carries a two-year statute of limitations for unpaid overtime and minimum wage claims (three years for willful violations), and allows collective actions where similarly situated employees opt in to a shared lawsuit. Texas’s parallel state law, the Texas Payday Act (Texas Labor Code Chapter 61), is enforced administratively through the Texas Workforce Commission and covers certain wage disputes not reached by the FLSA, such as commission and bonus disputes for some worker classifications.

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

Forester Haynie’s active, multi-state FLSA collective action docket and Matthew Haynie’s eight consecutive years on the Rising Stars list reflect a genuinely established plaintiff-side wage-and-hour practice with reach beyond a single-market employment boutique. The firm’s willingness to take on large multi-location employers in collective litigation, as illustrated by the Allied Universal case, distinguishes it from firms that handle primarily individual claims.

The honest complication for readers of this directory is scope: this is not a single-focus employment law firm. Its attorneys and its own Super Lawyers classifications span personal injury and mass torts alongside wage-and-hour work, meaning a client’s individual employment matter competes for attention within a broader plaintiff’s litigation practice rather than a boutique built around employment law alone. For collective wage claims specifically, that broader infrastructure may be an asset; for an individualized discrimination or wrongful termination matter, a single-focus employment firm elsewhere in this category may be a closer fit.

X. Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was compiled from the firm’s own website (foresterhaynie.com), including attorney biographies, practice area pages, client testimonials, and firm news posts; Super Lawyers’ attorney and firm profiles for Matthew Haynie and the firm; and a Tennessee Bar Association CLE faculty profile for Jay Forester. No case results, credentials, or quotes were invented; where independent verification of case outcomes or aggregate review scores was unavailable, 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 Forester Haynie PLLC 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 Forester Haynie PLLC or Awesome Attorneys.