New York City is home to one of the most sophisticated and competitive legal markets in the world, and its employment law bar reflects the extraordinary diversity and complexity of the city’s economic landscape. With a workforce spanning finance, technology, media, fashion, healthcare, education, retail, hospitality, and virtually every other industry sector, New York City generates an unparalleled volume and variety of employment law disputes that require attorneys with deep expertise in federal employment law, New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law — one of the most comprehensive anti-discrimination statutes in the entire country.
The New York City Human Rights Law is widely regarded as the most protective anti-discrimination statute in the United States, covering a broader range of protected characteristics than federal law and applying to smaller employers than Title VII’s fifteen-employee threshold. The NYCHRL’s broader coverage, lower pleading standards, and more generous remedies make it one of the most powerful tools available to New York City workers who have experienced workplace discrimination, and attorneys who have mastered its application provide their clients with significantly greater legal protection than federal law alone would offer.
New York State additionally provides the New York State Human Rights Law administered through the New York State Division of Human Rights, creating a three-layer system of federal, state, and city anti-discrimination law that the best New York City employment attorneys navigate with expertise that maximizes their clients’ available legal protections.
1. Douglas H. Wigdor — Wigdor LLP
- Address: 85 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003, United States
- Phone: +12122576800
Douglas Wigdor is one of the most prominent and nationally recognized plaintiff-side employment attorneys in the United States, with a practice at Wigdor LLP that has achieved landmark results in sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation cases against some of the most powerful employers and individuals in American corporate, media, and entertainment life. Wigdor’s cases have attracted national and international media attention and have been instrumental in shaping the legal landscape for sexual harassment accountability — particularly in the era of the MeToo movement, which Wigdor’s aggressive, high-profile litigation helped define and advance.
Wigdor has been recognized by Super Lawyers New York in employment law for multiple consecutive years, has been included in Best Lawyers in America, and has received the AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell. His willingness to take on the most powerful defendants in American corporate life — major media companies, Wall Street institutions, entertainment industry giants, and powerful individual executives — on behalf of workers who have experienced some of the most egregious workplace misconduct reflects a fearless commitment to accountability that defines his practice’s identity.
His firm Wigdor LLP has established a national reputation as one of the premier plaintiff-side employment practices in the country, attracting high-profile cases and achieving significant results that have demonstrated the power of determined, skilled legal advocacy to hold powerful institutions accountable for workplace wrongdoing.
2. David Sanford — Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight
- Address: 17 State St Ste 3700, New York, NY 10004, United States
- Phone: +16466791364
David Sanford is a nationally recognized class action employment attorney and founding partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, whose practice has achieved some of the largest employment discrimination class action settlements in United States history. Sanford’s practice focuses on large-scale class action cases involving systematic discrimination — race discrimination, gender discrimination, and pay equity — against major American corporations, producing results that have both compensated thousands of affected workers and produced institutional changes in workplace practices at some of the country’s largest employers.
Sanford has been recognized by Super Lawyers New York for multiple years and has been featured in national legal publications including The National Law Journal for his pioneering class action employment work. His firm’s offices in New York, San Francisco, Nashville, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. reflect the national scope of a practice that pursues workplace justice at a scale that individual plaintiff representation cannot match.
His commitment to challenging systemic discrimination through class action litigation — rather than limiting his practice to individual high-value cases — reflects a philosophy of worker advocacy that prioritizes broad social impact alongside individual client recovery, making his practice one of the most significant forces for employment law reform in the country.
3. John S. Snyder — Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight
- Address: 17 State St Ste 3700, New York, NY 10004, United States
- Phone: +16466791364
John Snyder is a senior partner at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight whose New York practice focuses on representing individual employees and executive clients in high-stakes employment disputes including discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and whistleblower cases. Snyder’s practice combines the class action capabilities of his firm’s national platform with individualized attention to high-value executive and professional employment matters — providing New York clients with a practitioner who understands both the macro landscape of employment law reform and the specific human dimensions of each client’s situation.
Snyder has been recognized by Super Lawyers New York in employment law and has achieved significant results for New York City clients in cases involving discrimination at major financial institutions, technology companies, and media organizations. His experience before the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York — the two federal courts that cover New York City — and his familiarity with the New York City Commission on Human Rights administrative process reflect the comprehensive procedural knowledge that effective New York City employment representation requires.
4. Jeanne M. Christensen — Wigdor LLP
- Address: 85 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003, United States
- Phone: +12122576800
Jeanne Christensen is a partner at Wigdor LLP whose practice focuses on representing employees and executives in sexual harassment, gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and retaliation cases throughout New York City and nationally. Christensen has been recognized by Super Lawyers New York in employment law and has been involved in high-profile cases against major New York employers — including cases that have received significant national media coverage and have contributed to the ongoing cultural and legal reckoning with workplace sexual harassment.
Christensen’s particular expertise in gender-based employment claims — including sophisticated understanding of both the legal framework and the evidentiary and strategic challenges that these cases present — reflects a depth of specialization that provides her clients with advocacy tailored to the specific complexities of their matters. Her experience leveraging the New York City Human Rights Law’s uniquely broad protections — including its lower pleading standards and broader coverage compared to federal Title VII — demonstrates the mastery of New York-specific employment law that maximizes her clients’ legal options.
Her position within Wigdor LLP’s high-profile plaintiff-side practice provides her clients with the institutional credibility, media sophistication, and litigation resources that high-stakes New York employment cases increasingly require.
5. Louis Pechman — Pechman Law Group PLLC
- Address: 488 Madison Ave Suite 1704, New York, NY 10022, United States
- Phone: +12125839500
Louis Pechman is one of New York City’s most highly regarded wage and hour attorneys, with a practice at Pechman Law Group that has represented thousands of New York workers in FLSA collective actions, New York Labor Law class actions, and individual wage theft cases against employers in virtually every industry sector that New York City’s diverse economy encompasses. Pechman has been recognized by Super Lawyers New York in employment law for multiple years and has built a practice recognized nationally as one of the premier wage and hour litigation firms in the country.
Pechman’s expertise encompasses the full range of wage and hour issues that arise in New York City’s complex employment market — tip credit violations in the restaurant industry, overtime denial in financial services, off-the-clock work in retail and healthcare, and misclassification schemes in the gig economy and construction sectors. His mastery of both the federal FLSA and New York Labor Law — which provides its own wage protections that frequently exceed federal standards — gives New York workers access to the full spectrum of available wage theft remedies under both federal and state law.
His firm’s dedicated focus on wage and hour litigation — and its track record of achieving significant collective action settlements and verdicts against major New York employers — reflects the specialized expertise and institutional commitment that the most complex multi-plaintiff wage cases demand. For New York City workers who have been systematically denied earned wages by their employers, Pechman represents one of the most experienced and effective advocates available anywhere in the country.
