Katz Melinger: The Lexington Avenue Firm That Also Collects on the Judgments Other Firms Can’t Enforce

At a Glance

Katz Melinger occupies an unusual position in the New York employment law market: it is not a single-sided plaintiff or defense shop, but a firm that, by its own description, has represented “employers, employees, businesses, and individuals” for more than a decade, while running a separate and substantial commercial collections and judgment enforcement practice alongside its employment docket.

Origin and Background

The firm was built by founding principal Kenneth J. Katz alongside Michael W. Melinger, and its own LinkedIn profile describes more than ten years of “rigorous and effective advocacy for employers, employees, businesses, and individuals throughout New York City, Nassau County, Suffolk County, Westchester County and surrounding areas, and northern New Jersey.” That two-sided description is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over: some of the firm’s own marketing pages describe its employment practice as “employee-side,” while its LinkedIn profile, Better Business Bureau listing, and Super Lawyers firm page describe a broader practice that also serves employers and businesses. Awesome Attorneys discloses this directly rather than resolving the discrepancy in either direction, consistent with treating mixed representation as a disclosed fact rather than a suppressed one.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

The firm’s defining structural feature is the breadth of what sits under one roof: employment law (for both sides of the employer-employee relationship, according to the firm’s own broader descriptions), general civil and business litigation, real estate matters, and a dedicated commercial collections and judgment enforcement practice. That last piece is unusual for a firm this size to maintain as a standing practice area rather than referring it out, and the firm’s own case results page leads with exactly that kind of matter — recovering $750,000 from a commercial tenant who had attempted to shield assets after defaulting on a ten-year lease.

Practice Areas

• Employment discrimination and harassment
• Severance negotiations
• Whistleblower representation
• Wage and hour disputes
• Commercial litigation and contract disputes
• Commercial collections and judgment enforcement

Track Record

The firm states it has settled or recovered more than $15 million for clients across its combined practice areas. Cited matters include a 15% severance increase plus extended health coverage negotiated for a laid-off employee, a whistleblower claim settled without litigation on behalf of a client who was demoted after refusing to falsify safety documents and reporting violations, and the $750,000 commercial judgment recovery described above. These figures span employment, business, and collections matters together rather than being broken out by practice area, and Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify each underlying 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 on the firm’s own site and third-party platforms are largely positive: one client wrote that Kenneth Katz “was clear and concise and responded to all of my inquiries right away,” while another, describing an employment arbitration matter, called the legal team’s “level of expertise and knowledge… very impressive.” A separate reviewer noted the firm represented them as a defendant in a commercial contract dispute, a useful reminder that the firm’s litigation docket runs in more than one direction. These are firm-published or platform-hosted reviews rather than independently sourced or verified accounts, and Awesome Attorneys treats them accordingly.

Beyond the Courtroom

Attorneys at the firm, including Nicole D. Grunfeld and Adam J. Sackowitz, are named alongside Katz on the firm’s attorney roster with practice areas spanning employment, business litigation, and creditor-debtor rights, reflecting the firm’s stated approach of building long-term client relationships across matter types rather than handling a single transaction and moving on; several client reviews describe having used the firm “multiple times” over the years for different needs.

Recognition

Katz Melinger PLLC has three attorneys named to the Super Lawyers or Rising Stars lists, per Super Lawyers’ own firm profile, with practice-area recognition spanning Employment & Labor, Business Litigation, Civil Litigation, and Creditor-Debtor Rights. 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-nomination rankings, not government-conferred certifications.

New York Legal Backdrop

Employment discrimination and harassment 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). 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). Commercial judgment enforcement in New York is separately governed by Article 52 of the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules (CPLR), which generally allows a money judgment to be enforced for twenty years from entry. None of this is legal advice; a specific employment or commercial matter should be evaluated by a licensed New York attorney based on the actual facts and filing deadlines involved.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Katz Melinger’s clearest differentiator is genuine practice breadth: an employment and civil litigation firm that also runs a real commercial collections and judgment enforcement practice, useful for a client who may need more than one kind of representation over time. The honest limitation is exactly the flip side of that breadth: unlike firms built exclusively around plaintiff-side employee advocacy, Katz Melinger’s own marketing materials describe representing both employers and employees, which means an employee choosing this firm should confirm directly, before engagement, whether the firm has represented or currently represents any employer relevant to their specific dispute. For an individual or small business that wants one firm capable of handling an employment matter, a commercial dispute, and judgment enforcement without having to engage separate counsel for each, Katz Melinger’s combined practice is a reasonable one to have on a shortlist; an employee seeking a firm whose institutional loyalty runs exclusively to workers may prefer one of the plaintiff-only firms also profiled in this directory.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Katz Melinger’s own website (katzmelinger.com), including its about, case results, attorney roster, and advantage pages, cross-referenced against the firm’s LinkedIn company profile, Better Business Bureau listing, and Super Lawyers firm profile.

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 Katz Melinger PLLC 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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Crumiller P.C.: The Brooklyn Firm a Canceled Maternity Leave Turned Into an $11.25 Million Verdict Against Equinox

At a Glance

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.

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

At a Glance

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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Derek Smith Law Group: The Nelson Tower Firm Behind the Largest Sustained Emotional Distress Verdict in a U.S. Employment Case

At a Glance

Derek T. Smith has practiced exclusively on the employee side of the docket since 1995, the same year he was admitted to the New York bar after graduating from Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law. Three decades later, the firm he founded has grown into one of the larger plaintiff-only employment discrimination practices in the country by attorney headcount, anchored by a Midtown Manhattan office in the Nelson Tower, directly above Penn Station.

Origin and Background

Smith earned his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1991 and, according to his own biography, studied at the Université de Droit, d’Économie, et des Sciences d’Aix-Marseille in France before completing his J.D. He was admitted to the New York bar in 1995 and founded the firm that same year, focusing from the outset on sexual harassment and discrimination cases rather than building a general employment or civil litigation practice first and adding a discrimination docket later. That singular focus, sustained for three decades, is one of the more specific and verifiable origin facts among New York plaintiff-side employment firms, many of which pivoted into employment law from a broader personal injury or civil litigation base.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

The firm operates eight offices — New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. — a footprint that is unusually broad for a firm built around a single named founder rather than a merger of regional practices. The firm states this lets it take on nationwide discrimination and harassment matters, including cases against major corporations and public figures, while keeping New York as its flagship trial office. Smith separately maintains a distinct mediation practice, serving as a Harvard Law School-trained, Cornell-certified neutral in employment disputes; in that separate role he mediates matters for both employees and employers, a detail the firm’s own materials disclose and one Awesome Attorneys is likewise disclosing here, since it differs from the firm’s litigation practice, which represents employees exclusively.

Practice Areas

• Sexual harassment (quid pro quo and hostile work environment)
• Employment discrimination (race, gender, age, disability, national origin, sexual orientation)
• Retaliation and wrongful termination
• Wage and hour disputes
• Civil rights litigation
• Sexual assault and sexual abuse litigation (including student and non-employment matters)

Track Record

The firm states it has secured more than $400 million in settlements and verdicts for clients and that Smith personally holds what the firm describes as the largest emotional distress jury verdict ever sustained on appeal in a U.S. employment discrimination case. The firm’s own materials also cite two individual verdicts of $2.5 million and $1.6 million in sexual harassment and discrimination matters, and a single settlement in excess of $15 million on behalf of one client. These are the firm’s own characterizations of matters and outcomes; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify the underlying verdict records or the “largest ever sustained on appeal” superlative against a comprehensive national database of appellate employment verdicts. Past results in any matter do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.

Client Voice

Client accounts published on the firm’s own site describe attorneys as attentive through difficult, emotionally fraught matters; one client wrote that after being terminated on the basis of discrimination, the attorney handling the case “listened to all of my concerns and navigated me through a challenging process,” while another described an attorney on a sexual assault matter as consistently available and communicative “every step of the way.” These are firm-published testimonials rather than independently sourced or third-party-verified reviews, and Awesome Attorneys treats them accordingly — as representative of the firm’s own presentation of its client relationships rather than confirmed, verifiable accounts.

Beyond the Courtroom

Smith serves as a judge for the Robert F. Wagner National Labor and Employment Law Moot Court Competition and the Charles W. Froessel Intramural Moot Court Competition, and holds memberships in the National Employment Lawyers Association, its New York and Philadelphia chapters, and the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, per his professional biography.

Recognition

Derek T. Smith has been recognized by Super Lawyers as a top-rated New York employment and labor attorney, and the firm cites recognition across the multiple state bars in which it practices, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and California. 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 Smith or any attorney at this firm on that basis; the credentials above are peer-nomination rankings, not government-conferred certifications.

New York Legal Backdrop

Employment discrimination and sexual harassment 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); sexual harassment claims specifically have carried a three-year NYSHRL limitations period since 2020. 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

Derek Smith Law Group’s clearest differentiator is three uninterrupted decades of exclusively plaintiff-side sexual harassment and discrimination work, scaled to eight offices while keeping New York as its flagship trial office. The honest trade-off is that a firm built around jury verdicts and headline-generating cases, with a founder who has cultivated a national media presence, is not necessarily the right fit for an employee who wants the most discreet, low-visibility path to a quiet resolution; the firm’s own published matters emphasize trial results and large verdicts over quiet, confidential settlements. For an employee who has experienced serious harassment or discrimination and wants a firm with a long, singular track record in exactly that kind of case, Derek Smith Law Group is a reasonable one to have on a shortlist.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from the firm’s own website (discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com), including its firm overview, attorney biography, and testimonials pages, cross-referenced against Derek T. Smith’s Super Lawyers profile, Justia and Lawyers.com attorney listings, and Martindale-Hubbell’s New York office 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 Derek Smith Law Group, PLLC 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.

The post Derek Smith Law Group: The Nelson Tower Firm Behind the Largest Sustained Emotional Distress Verdict in a U.S. Employment Case appeared first on Awesome Attorneys.

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

At a Glance

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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Vladeck, Raskin & Clark: The Fifth Avenue Firm That Has Never Represented a Company Since 1949

At a Glance

Origin and Background

Vladeck, Raskin & Clark did not start out representing individual employees at all — it started representing unions. The firm states that Stephen and Judith Vladeck founded it in 1949 as a union-side labor practice, and while the firm still represents unions and employee benefit funds today, it has spent the decades since expanding into representing individual employees, from entry-level workers to senior executives, in discrimination, retaliation, and contract disputes. That union-side origin is unusual among New York employment boutiques, most of which were built from the start around individual plaintiff-side litigation rather than organized labor.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

The firm states plainly that it never represents companies or managers — a one-sided-representation policy it has held since its labor-firm founding, which removes any question of whether the firm might also take management-side work that could create a conflict. Partner Debra L. Raskin, who joined the firm in 1986 and later served as President of the New York City Bar Association from 2014 to 2016, is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and has taught employment law at both Columbia and Fordham law schools, per her firm biography — the kind of bar-leadership credential that’s relatively rare even among senior employment litigators.

Practice Areas

• Employment discrimination (race, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion)
• Retaliation and wrongful termination
• Executive employment contract disputes
• Wage and hour claims
• Disability rights
• Union and employee benefit fund representation

Track Record

The firm states it represented more than 60 loss-prevention supervisors and agents in a case against retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. The firm’s own site notes that some of its most significant successes are settlements not publicized on its website or in reported decisions, meaning its published case list understates its actual results; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify outcome figures for unpublished matters. Past results in any matter do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.

Client Voice

Awesome Attorneys did not identify a set of independently attributed, publicly posted client reviews specific to this firm as of the research date. The firm holds a Martindale-Hubbell Client Champion award, based on the platform’s own account, on the volume and quality of client reviews submitted through that service, though the individual reviews themselves were not independently locatable as of research.

Beyond the Courtroom

Debra Raskin has lectured and written on employment law for the New York State Bar Association and the Practising Law Institute, per her firm biography, and the firm’s attorneys regularly speak at continuing legal education programs run by the New York City Bar Association and the New York County Lawyers’ Association.

Recognition

The firm states it is recognized by Chambers & Partners and Martindale-Hubbell for its employment law practice. Associate Jeremiah Iadevaia was named to the 2025 Lawdragon 500 Leading Civil Rights & Plaintiff Employment Lawyers list and recognized as a “Labor & Employment Star” by Benchmark Litigation for the Northeast/New York region, according to his attorney biography. 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

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 law. As of 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). Federal Title VII claims generally require an EEOC charge within 300 days in New York, given the state and city’s overlapping anti-discrimination laws. 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

Vladeck, Raskin & Clark’s clearest differentiator is longevity paired with a genuinely one-sided practice: a firm operating continuously since 1949 that states it has never represented a company or manager, with a named partner who led the New York City Bar Association and a track record the firm itself says is understated because so many of its wins are confidential settlements. The honest trade-off is that a firm this institution-rooted publishes relatively little in the way of a marketed, itemized results table, and Awesome Attorneys could not locate independently attributed client reviews to weigh against the firm’s own account of its history. For an employee, executive, or professional who wants a firm with genuine bar-leadership standing and three-quarters of a century of exclusively representing workers, that combination is a reasonable basis for a shortlist; someone who wants to see a public tally of settlement figures before hiring may find less to go on than at a more marketing-forward firm.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Vladeck, Raskin & Clark’s own website, including its firm history, employment law, and wage-and-hour pages, Debra L. Raskin’s and Jeremiah Iadevaia’s attorney biographies, and independent listings on Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, and Justia confirming office address and bar admissions.

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 Vladeck, Raskin & Clark, 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.

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Wigdor LLP: The Fifth Avenue Firm Behind $1.5 Billion in Employment Verdicts and Settlements

At a Glance

Origin and Background

Douglas H. Wigdor did not start his career representing employees. The firm states he began as an Assistant District Attorney in Suffolk County, New York, then spent years in the labor and employment group of a large law firm representing Fortune 500 companies — the defense side of the docket he would later spend two decades litigating against. He founded Wigdor LLP in 2003 with the stated goal of giving individual employees an advocate capable of matching powerful companies and individuals on even footing. That switch from institutional defense work to plaintiff-side representation is the kind of specific, documented biographical detail that’s harder to find at firms built the other way around.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

Wigdor LLP is a litigation boutique, not a volume employment-complaint mill: the firm states it tries cases to verdict rather than settling as a default strategy, and its founder has personally represented plaintiffs in some of the most closely covered sexual harassment and discrimination cases of the past two decades, including Cassie Ventura’s lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs and the 2011 Sofitel Hotel case involving former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The firm states that reputation for trying cases — rather than being known primarily as a settlement shop — gives it negotiating leverage that a lower-profile firm of comparable size typically lacks.

Practice Areas

• Employment discrimination (race, gender, age, disability, national origin)
• Sexual harassment and sexual assault
• Retaliation and wrongful termination
• Whistleblower representation
• Wage and hour disputes
• Executive compensation and contract disputes

Track Record

The firm states its combined trial verdicts, arbitration awards, and settlements exceed $1.5 billion, and that it has appeared in the New York Law Journal’s annual “Top Verdicts” list in six of the last eight years, including the top two employment verdicts and the top disability discrimination verdict in the state in a given year, per the firm’s own account. Independently reported matters include a defamation lawsuit on behalf of former NBA player Charles Oakley against Madison Square Garden and its owner, revived on appeal by the Second Circuit, and representation of the former Chief Financial Officer of Six Flags in a breach-of-contract and fraud case litigated before a retired Second Circuit judge. These are the firm’s own characterizations of matters and outcomes it says it achieved; 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

Independently posted client reviews collected through Best Law Firms’ client survey program describe the firm as “never intimidated by the other side” and note that phone and email messages were answered promptly throughout litigation. These reviews are not individually attributed to a named client, consistent with how the review platform publishes them, so Awesome Attorneys treats them as representative rather than verified individual testimony.

Beyond the Courtroom

Douglas Wigdor serves as an arbitrator on the American Arbitration Association’s Employment Panel, per the firm, and sits on the Employee Representative Board of Cornell University’s Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor and Employment Relations (CIHLER), where he has discussed how the center’s hospitality-law programming informed his handling of the Sofitel Hotel litigation.

Recognition

Wigdor LLP states that five of its attorneys were named to the 2027 Best Lawyers in America list, a peer-review honor the firm notes does not permit attorneys to pay for inclusion, and that Douglas Wigdor has been recognized in Best Lawyers rankings for twelve consecutive years. The firm also cites Chambers & Partners recognition in the “Labor and Employment: Mainly Plaintiffs” category for New York and a Super Lawyers Top 100 New York Metro ranking for its founder. 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

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 of which are broader in coverage than federal anti-discrimination statutes. As of 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). Federal claims under Title VII generally require filing an EEOC charge within 300 days in New York, given the state and city’s own overlapping anti-discrimination laws. 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

Wigdor LLP’s clearest differentiator is a founder-driven, media-visible litigation practice with a stated $1.5 billion track record and a documented history of taking marquee cases — Strauss-Kahn, Cassie Ventura, Charles Oakley — to verdict or public resolution rather than quiet settlement. The honest trade-off is that a firm built for landmark, headline-generating litigation is not necessarily the right fit for an employee who wants a low-profile, private resolution to a smaller wage or contract dispute; the firm’s own published matters skew toward high-profile, high-value cases rather than routine claims. For an employee facing serious discrimination, harassment, or retaliation who wants a firm willing to try the case rather than settle by default, Wigdor’s record makes it a reasonable one to have on a shortlist; someone with a modest wage-and-hour claim may be better served by a firm built around volume rather than headline verdicts.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Wigdor LLP’s own website, including its firm overview, Douglas Wigdor’s attorney biography, and its 2018 year-in-review press page, cross-referenced against independent profiles and case coverage from Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, the National Trial Lawyers, and Cornell University’s CIHLER program.

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 Wigdor 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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Ottinger Employment Lawyers: The Madison Avenue Firm Launched From a Jersey City One-Bedroom in 1999

At a Glance

Origin and Background

Robert Ottinger opened his firm in December 1999 and ran it, at first, from a one-bedroom apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey — a detail the firm publishes on its own site rather than burying. Before that, per his firm biography and independent attorney-directory profiles, he clerked for a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, spent three years as a Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice trying juvenile and gang cases in South Central Los Angeles, and then joined the New York Attorney General’s office as an Assistant Attorney General in the civil division’s employment section, where he states he won all 14 of his cases that went to jury trial. The firm has operated continuously since, adding California offices in 2009 while keeping its New York practice at 79 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

Ottinger Employment Lawyers has done one thing for more than 25 years: represent employees, never employers. The founder has described the firm’s method in unusually concrete terms — each case gets a “cast of characters” document, a fact chronology, and a hot-document list, treating litigation preparation like assembling a story for trial — and the firm states it runs an online case-management system that clients can access directly to view their own case documents, a transparency practice that remains uncommon among small plaintiff-side firms.

Practice Areas

• Employment discrimination and retaliation
• Wrongful termination
• Executive severance and employment contract negotiation
• Sexual harassment
• Whistleblower claims
• Wage, overtime, commission, and bonus disputes

Track Record

The firm does not publish an itemized verdict-and-settlement table with dollar figures; instead it describes representative matters by category, stating it has won cases for, among others, a waitress sexually harassed by kitchen staff, an investment banker discharged because of his age, sales representatives cheated out of owed commissions, and a legal assistant discharged due to pregnancy, along with executive severance negotiations. These are the firm’s own characterizations of matters it says it handled; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify individual outcomes. Past results in any matter do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.

Client Voice

Client reviews published on the firm’s own site include one from a reviewer identified as Megan I. describing Robert Ottinger as “responsive, professional, knowledgeable and above all effective” in his advice and representation. Because these reviews appear on the firm’s own site rather than a fully independent platform, Awesome Attorneys treats them as firm-published testimonials; independently posted reviews also appear on Yelp for the firm’s Madison Avenue office.

Beyond the Courtroom

The firm publishes an extensive library of plain-English employment law guides on its own site, covering topics such as severance negotiation, independent contractor classification, and minimum wage rules, aimed at employees researching their situations before hiring counsel.

Recognition

Awesome Attorneys did not identify formal peer-review rankings such as Chambers & Partners or Best Lawyers tied to this firm as of the research date; the firm’s public reputation rests primarily on longevity, client reviews, and its founder’s documented government trial record rather than directory awards. 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

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 law. As of 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). Federal Title VII claims generally require an EEOC charge within 300 days in New York, given the state and city’s overlapping anti-discrimination laws. 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

Ottinger Employment Lawyers’ clearest differentiator is a founder with a documented government trial pedigree — a perfect stated jury-trial record at the New York Attorney General’s employment section — running a boutique that has represented only employees for more than 25 years, with an unusually transparent, client-accessible case-management approach. The honest trade-off is that the firm publishes no itemized results table and holds no major directory rankings, so a prospective client has less independently verifiable outcome data to evaluate than at larger, more decorated plaintiff-side firms. For an executive negotiating a severance package or an employee with a discrimination or wage claim who values direct access to a small, experienced team, this firm’s longevity and trial background make it a reasonable one to have on a shortlist; someone whose case may need the resources of a large class-action operation will likely need a bigger firm.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Ottinger Employment Lawyers’ own website, including its firm history, New York office, and Robert Ottinger’s attorney biography, cross-referenced against independent profiles on Lawyer Legion, PitchBook, and Yelp confirming founding date, office address, and the founder’s government trial background.

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 Ottinger Employment Lawyers 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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Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight: The Financial District Firm Behind the Largest Employment Discrimination Verdict in U.S. History

At a Glance

Origin and Background

David Sanford and Jeremy Heisler founded the firm in 2004 with a stated goal of litigating public interest and social justice cases, and Manhattan was one of the firm’s two original offices, per the firm’s own site — it is now the firm’s largest location among seven nationwide. The firm has since added two more named partners: Kevin Sharp, a former Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, joined in 2017, and H. Vincent McKnight Jr., co-chair of the firm’s Whistleblower and Qui Tam Practice Group, became a named partner in 2024. That trajectory — a two-person 2004 startup growing into a seven-office firm led partly by a former federal judge — is documented across the firm’s own history pages and independent legal-industry coverage.

What Makes This Firm Structurally Different

Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight is built around large class and collective actions rather than individual case volume: the firm states it has recovered over half a billion dollars for plaintiffs, anchored by a $253 million jury verdict against Novartis for gender discrimination in pay, promotions, and pregnancy-related treatment, a case that benefited more than 7,000 female pharmaceutical sales representatives and which The American Lawyer recognized as the largest employment discrimination class-action verdict in U.S. history, per the firm. That scale of litigation — multi-thousand-person classes rather than single-plaintiff matters — is a different model from most boutique employment firms.

Practice Areas

• Employment discrimination class actions
• Wage and hour and misclassification litigation
• Whistleblower and qui tam / False Claims Act representation
• Sexual harassment and Title IX litigation
• ERISA and 401(k) mismanagement claims
• Executive and individual employment representation

Track Record

Beyond the $253 million Novartis gender-discrimination verdict, the firm states it separately negotiated a $99 million wage-and-hour settlement on behalf of more than 7,000 Novartis sales representatives for unpaid overtime, after winning a Second Circuit appeal establishing the underlying misclassification claim. In June 2025, the firm states it secured final approval of a $69 million settlement on behalf of more than 350,000 beneficiaries of the UnitedHealth Group 401(k) Savings Plan. These are the firm’s own characterizations of matters and settlement figures; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify every recovery amount against court records. Past results in any matter do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.

Client Voice

Awesome Attorneys did not identify a set of independently attributed, publicly posted individual client reviews for the firm’s New York office specifically as of the research date, consistent with a practice built primarily around large class actions rather than individually marketed client relationships.

Beyond the Courtroom

The firm states its attorneys have represented plaintiffs in litigation described as advancing broader public-interest goals beyond individual case outcomes, including a pending class action on behalf of more than 10,000 current and former African American Deputy U.S. Marshals alleging racial discrimination in hiring, promotion, and assignment dating back to 1994, according to the firm’s own case descriptions.

Recognition

The firm states it was named a 2020 and 2021 Labor and Employment Firm of the Year by Benchmark Litigation, and the National Law Journal’s Elite Trial Lawyers named it 2021 Employment Rights Firm of the Year and Human Rights Firm of the Year. Best Law Firms awarded the firm Tier 1 rankings in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Nashville in its 2026 guide. Founding partner David Sanford was inducted into the National Law Journal’s Elite Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame in 2015 and has been named a Law360 Employment MVP in multiple years, per his firm biography. 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

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 law. As of 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). Federal Title VII claims generally require an EEOC charge within 300 days in New York, and wage claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act generally carry a two-year limitations period (three years for willful violations). 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

Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight’s clearest differentiator is scale: a firm built specifically for large, multi-plaintiff class and collective actions, anchored by what the firm says is the largest employment discrimination class-action verdict in U.S. history and hundreds of millions more in wage and 401(k) settlements. The honest trade-off is that this model is built for group litigation against major institutions, not for an individual employee with a single, smaller-dollar dispute who wants close, one-on-one attention from day one; the firm’s own published matters are almost entirely large-scale class actions rather than individual representations. For an employee who believes their situation reflects a broader, company-wide pattern worth a class or collective action, or a whistleblower considering a qui tam claim, this firm’s specific litigation history makes it a reasonable one to have on a shortlist; someone with an individual dispute unlikely to become a class action may be better served by a smaller, individually focused practice.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight’s own website, including its firm history, New York office, and attorney biography pages for David Sanford and Jeremy Heisler, cross-referenced against independent coverage from Benchmark Litigation, Chambers & Partners, and a GlobeNewswire press release confirming the UnitedHealth Group 401(k) settlement approval.

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 Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, 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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Parmet Law PC: A Houston Wage Attorney Commended by a California Mayor for a Case Against Amazon

In February 2025, the Mayor of Lancaster, California formally commended Matthew Parmet for excellence in trial advocacy as plaintiffs’ counsel in Boone v. Amazon.com Services, LLC — a specific, dated, out-of-state civic recognition that goes beyond the usual peer-review awards most attorneys in this category cite.

At a Glance

Origin and Background

Matthew Parmet earned his J.D. from Tulane University Law School in 2009 and was admitted to the Texas bar the same year. Since 2015, he has focused nearly exclusively on helping employees recover unpaid wages, founding Parmet Law PC as a contingency-only practice. Awesome Attorneys did not identify Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification for Parmet and discloses that absence directly. He is a member of the National Employment Lawyers Association, the Houston Trial Lawyers Association, and the Texas Employment Lawyers Association.

Practice Concentration

The firm represents employees exclusively in wage-and-hour class and collective actions under both federal and state wage laws, covering unpaid overtime, minimum wage violations, tip pooling disputes, and employee misclassification claims. See this Houston Employment & Labor directory for how this contingency-only, wage-focused model compares to firms handling a broader range of employment matters. Parmet’s client base spans airlines, oil and gas, construction, welding, healthcare, food service, insurance, finance, retail, and manufacturing industries across more than 40 states, not just Texas.

Track Record

Parmet has recovered unpaid wages for thousands of workers across hundreds of matters, and received a February 2025 commendation from the City of Lancaster, California, by Mayor R. Rex Parris, specifically for excellence in trial advocacy as plaintiffs’ counsel in Boone v. Amazon.com Services, LLC — an independently verifiable, cited case with a named, dated civic recognition.

Client Voice

Awesome Attorneys did not identify a significant volume of independent third-party client reviews (Avvo, Yelp) specific to this firm, which is disclosed here as a gap rather than omitted.

Beyond the Courtroom

Parmet’s February 2025 commendation from the City of Lancaster, California, is a documented civic recognition tied to a specific case rather than a general community-service claim, reflecting the multi-state, nationwide reach of his wage-and-hour practice beyond Texas alone.

Recognition for This Houston Employment & Labor Attorney

Awesome Attorneys did not identify TBLS board certification for Parmet and does not apply “specialist” language on that basis. His recognition instead rests on his Super Lawyers Rising Star selection (2018–2024), his multi-state case volume across 40-plus states, and the specific City of Lancaster civic commendation — credentials distinct from formal board certification.

Texas Legal Backdrop

The Fair Labor Standards Act, this firm’s core practice area, is a federal law governing minimum wage and overtime that operates independently of Texas state wage law, with its own statute of limitations generally set at two years, extended to three for willful violations. FLSA collective actions use an opt-in mechanism, meaning affected workers must actively join a case rather than being automatically included as in a typical state-court class action. None of this is legal advice; a specific wage dispute should be evaluated by a licensed attorney based on the actual facts involved.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Parmet Law’s clearest, most checkable differentiator is Matthew Parmet’s genuinely nationwide wage-and-hour caseload spanning more than 40 states, evidenced by a specific, dated civic commendation tied to a named case against a major national employer. The honest trade-off: Awesome Attorneys did not identify TBLS board certification for Parmet, a credential several other firms in this category hold, and published independent review volume was limited for this firm specifically. For a worker whose wage claim may be part of a larger, multi-state collective action rather than an isolated Texas dispute, this nationwide case experience is a genuine, checkable differentiator.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Parmet Law PC’s official website (parmet.law), the State Bar of Texas’s public attorney lookup confirming license and office address, and the firm’s Super Lawyers published attorney profile.

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 Parmet Law PC prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placement products to attorneys and firms, including this one, but sponsorship has no bearing on the editorial content, inclusion, or findings of this profile.

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