Bryan Schwartz
A smart and tenacious litigator, Bryan Schwartz has represented clients’ interests before a wide range of adjudicative bodies: from the United States District Court to the United States Courts of Appeals; from California Superior Courts to the California Supreme Court; from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the Merit Systems Protection Board; from the United States Department of Labor to labor arbitration before the American Arbitration Association and other organizations. Mr. Schwartz has helped many grateful clients get their careers back on track after employer wrongdoing derailed them, obtaining tens of millions in recovery for employees across the country.
Mr. Schwartz’s efforts on behalf of whistleblowers and discrimination victims have been publicized worldwide, from The NY Times to The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, from National Public Radio to MSNBC, from Voice of America to India’s Hindustani Times. Mr. Schwartz has developed a niche in Federal employees’ unique claims and has led multi-plaintiff, class, and collective actions involving overtime and other wage violations under state and federal laws across the country.
Before founding his own firm in 2009, Mr. Schwartz led the San Francisco, California, office of Nichols Kaster, LLP. Previously, Mr. Schwartz practiced with the Washington, DC-based firm of Passman & Kaplan, PC, and clerked for the late Hon. Franklin Van Antwerpen, formerly a member of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Schwartz is a member of the Board of Directors of Legal Aid at Work. He is the past chair of the State Bar of California’s Labor and Employment Law Section, which has over 7500 members, and also past President of FAIR, a non-profit foundation dedicated to increasing diversity in the plaintiffs’ employment Bar and to workers’ rights education. He is also a past member of the Executive Board of the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA).
Mr. Schwartz has chaired the Annual Meeting of the Labor and Employment Law Section, the State Bar’s Advanced Wage and Hour Conference, and Legal Aid at Work’s Annual Gala. He helped to initiate CELA’s statewide Employee Justice Fellowship, to aid law students of all backgrounds in entering the practice of representing workers, and CELA’s annual Diversity Summit, by which hundreds of labor and employment lawyers gather to discuss how to create leadership opportunities for diverse attorneys in the field and overcome bias in the profession. Mr. Schwartz appeared as amicus curiae before the California Supreme Court on behalf of CELA in several critical cases, including Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, Kirby v. Immoos Fire Protection, and Duran v. US Bank.
Mr. Schwartz is one of California’s most prolific speakers and authors on employment law subjects. He has presented often to the State Bar, the National Employment Lawyers Association, CELA, and elsewhere, from NPR’s “Your Legal Rights” radio show to the ABA’s Commission on Disability Rights, to the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association, to JAMS (the arbitration and mediation provider). His articles have been published in the California Labor and Employment Law Review, Plaintiff Magazine, and other media. The firm’s blog is a resource for jurists, attorneys, and workers nationwide.