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Rob Wiley, P.C.: The Firm That Charges a Consultation Fee on Purpose

Ask Rob Wiley why his firm charges for an initial consultation and he doesn’t dodge the question. It is, he says, the tenth item on his own published list of “ten questions to ask before hiring an employment lawyer” — and his answer to his own question is blunt: charging a fee cuts down on casual inquiries, ensures an actual attorney sits in on every first meeting, and screens for clients who are serious about their case. It is an unusual thing for a plaintiff-side firm to volunteer, and it sets the tone for a practice built almost entirely around representing workers, not the companies that employ them. For anyone comparing options among Dallas employment lawyer firms, that transparency is itself a data point.

At a Glance: Dallas Employment Lawyer Firm Overview

I. A Mansion Built for One Side of the Docket

Robert J. Wiley founded his Dallas practice in early 2000 after earning his law degree at Tulane, following undergraduate study at Vanderbilt. The firm’s own materials describe a deliberate identity from the outset: employees only. Rob Wiley, P.C. does not take employer-side work, a choice the firm frames not as marketing but as a conflict-avoidance strategy — representing companies in some matters while suing them in others would compromise the aggressiveness the firm markets to prospective clients.

The firm’s office itself doubles as a statement piece: a restored Victorian mansion built in 1910, located in the State-Thomas neighborhood of Uptown Dallas, some distance in character from the glass-tower offices of the management-side firms that typically sit across the table in an employment dispute. Wiley has led the practice for a quarter-century, expanding at various points into Austin and San Antonio in addition to the Dallas home office, and the firm’s own account puts the number of employees represented over that span at nearly 2,000.

II. Board Certification, Twice Over

Texas Bar rules prohibit any attorney from advertising as a “specialist” unless board certified in that specialty by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization (TBLS) or an accredited certifying organization. At Rob Wiley, P.C., two attorneys carry that credential in Labor and Employment Law: founder Robert J. Wiley, certified since 2004, and attorney Deontae D. Wherry. The firm’s own site is explicit that certification does not extend to every attorney on staff — a disclosure worth noting given how often board certification gets implied rather than stated precisely.

Wiley has also held elected roles inside the practicing bar rather than only client-facing ones: past chair of the Dallas Bar Association’s Employment Law Council, and past president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Employment Lawyers Association. He has been named a Texas Super Lawyer every year since 2014, following a Rising Star designation from 2012–2013.

III. Practice Concentration: What This Dallas Employment Attorney Firm Handles

The firm’s practice areas track closely to the statutory categories that define labor and employment law in Texas: discrimination claims (race, sex, age, disability, pregnancy, sexual orientation and gender identity), retaliation, hostile work environment, wrongful termination, wage and hour disputes (unpaid overtime, minimum wage, tipped-employee pay), Family and Medical Leave Act claims, and whistleblower matters — including representation of federal employees before the Merit Systems Protection Board, a niche not every Dallas employment boutique covers.

Nearly all of the firm’s cases proceed either through administrative agencies — the EEOC, the U.S. Department of Labor, or the Texas Workforce Commission — or in state and federal court. The firm states it has filed hundreds of EEOC discrimination charges over the past decade and, while most of its cases are individual matters, it also takes on class and collective wage actions. Readers can review the firm’s own account of its practice areas directly at robwiley.com.

IV. Track Record

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Employment settlements are frequently confidential by the terms employers negotiate, which limits what any firm — including this one — can publish about individual case values. The results below are drawn from the firm’s own published account of matters that produced a public court record.

The firm is candid on its own site that most employer settlements come with confidentiality terms it cannot break; the table above reflects the minority of matters that produced a public record, not a representative sample of typical case values.

V. Client Voice

Reviews on Avvo and Yelp are largely favorable, with recurring praise for responsiveness and for the firm’s practice of having an actual attorney — not paralegal staff — present at initial consultations. One reviewer described the firm as fighting for overtime pay “along with 5 other former employees” after resigning over unpaid wages, and credited the firm with recovering the underlying wages plus liquidated damages. Another client wrote:

“I cannot recommend The Law Offices of Rob Wiley P.C. highly enough. From the moment I contacted their team, I was met with professionalism, warmth, and a genuine willingness to help.”

Not every review is positive. A February 2024 Avvo review titled “Disappointing Experience with Austin Campbell” describes dissatisfaction with a specific attorney’s handling of a matter, and at least one earlier review elsewhere describes a client who felt misled about fee expectations after a right-to-sue letter issued. Awesome Attorneys includes both signals rather than only the favorable ones; a firm handling hundreds of individual claims a year will not satisfy every client, and a directory that only shows the positive reviews isn’t giving readers the full picture.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

The firm states directly that it does not participate in pro bono activities, explaining that its capacity is devoted to paid representation of employees against employers — an unusually direct disclosure for a firm’s own marketing material, and one that Awesome Attorneys is noting rather than dressing up. Wiley and firm attorneys are frequent speakers at employment-law CLE events, including the National Employment Lawyers Association’s 2019 annual conference in New Orleans, and Wiley holds leadership roles in both the Dallas Bar Association’s Labor and Employment section and the Dallas-Fort Worth Employment Lawyers Association.

VII. Recognition

Peer-reviewed and independently conferred credentials: Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification in Labor and Employment Law (Wiley and Wherry); Texas Super Lawyer selection (Thomson Reuters’ peer-review process) every year since 2014; U.S. News & World Report Best Law Firms recognition (2017–2022 per firm materials); an Avvo rating of 10/10 as of 2020.

Marketing-program or self-reported recognition, distinguished here rather than blended in: Expertise.com listing since 2019, and a 2009 “best civil attorney” designation from Dallas Voice, a local publication rather than a legal peer-review body. These are worth noting as context but should not be read with the same weight as board certification or Super Lawyers peer selection.

VIII. The Texas Legal Backdrop

Texas remains an at-will employment state, meaning an employer generally may terminate a worker for any reason or no reason — with important exceptions that define the terrain this firm and others like it litigate. Federal anti-discrimination statutes (Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA) apply to employers with 15 or more employees (20 or more for age claims), and claims typically must first be filed with the EEOC before a lawsuit can proceed. Texas runs a parallel state-law track under the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act, codified at Texas Labor Code Chapter 21, which requires a charge be filed with the Texas Workforce Commission’s Civil Rights Division within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory act — a shorter window than many employees expect.

Wage claims run through a different framework: the federal Fair Labor Standards Act governs minimum wage and overtime, generally carrying a two-year limitations period (three years for willful violations), while the Texas Payday Act, Texas Labor Code Chapter 61, allows employees to pursue unpaid wage claims through the Texas Workforce Commission. And Texas common law recognizes a narrow but well-established exception to at-will employment first announced in Sabine Pilot Service, Inc. v. Hauck (Tex. 1985): an employer may not fire a worker solely for refusing to commit an illegal act. Public employees who blow the whistle on illegal conduct have a separate statutory remedy under the Texas Whistleblower Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 554.

IX. Awesome Attorneys Assessment: Weighing This Dallas Employment Lawyer

Rob Wiley, P.C.’s clearest strength is focus: a firm that has represented nearly 2,000 employees over 25 years without ever representing an employer has a depth of institutional experience on one side of the docket that a general-practice or mixed-representation firm cannot easily match, and two board-certified attorneys on an eight-person team is a meaningful concentration of the state’s toughest employment credential. The firm’s own published victories — a Fifth Circuit win, a federal summary judgment on unpaid sleep-time wages, a police department race discrimination settlement — are genuine public-record results, not merely claimed ones.

The honest caveat is one the firm itself half-acknowledges: consultation fees and a stated preference for cases with real recovery potential mean this is not a low-barrier option for every worker with a workplace grievance, and the February 2024 negative review is a reminder that outcomes and client experience vary by which attorney within the firm handles a given matter, as they do at every multi-attorney practice.

X. Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was compiled from the firm’s own website (robwiley.com), including its Victories, Client Reviews, and attorney biography pages; the Texas Board of Legal Specialization’s certification standards; client reviews on Avvo and Yelp; and Super Lawyers’ peer-review attorney profiles. Case results, client counts, and awards are the firm’s own published claims unless otherwise noted as independently sourced, and are attributed as such. Client testimonials are excerpts of real, publicly posted reviews, including one critical review, reproduced to give an accurate picture rather than a curated one. Statutory citations were checked against the Texas Labor Code and Texas Government Code. No case results, credentials, or quotes were invented.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Rob Wiley, P.C. 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 Rob Wiley, P.C. or Awesome Attorneys.