For more than 20 years Lizabeth Schalet has been one of the leading employment attorneys in New York City representing employees and executives with workplace harassment, pay and overtime, contract, discrimination and pay-equity claims. She focuses on class-action wage/hour litigation, discriminatory harassment cases and assisting employees with the negotiation of exit and severance packages. For starters, she relates well to an extensive range of employees at different levels in the workplace: She works with senior level management professionals, sales staff as well as service employees at fine dining establishments and factory or maintenance workers. According to peers, she has been a strong advocate for employees raising workplace harassment issues in a wide variety of fields including finance, technology, real estate, media and the restaurant industry. She has successfully litigated complex class-action wage cases, obtaining significant unpaid pay and overtime compensation for her clients, and she is well-known for achieving notable settlements for Managing Directors, Vice-Presidents and other senior-level staff.

She started her career with the Legal Aid Society as a criminal defense attorney and fine-tuned her litigation skills as a trial attorney in the Law Enforcement Bureau at the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Since 1998 she has been one of four partners at Lipman & Plesur, LLP, one of the region's leading boutique firms practicing in the area of employment law.

She has taken on - and prevailed in -- major complex class-action litigation, most significantly wage-and-hour disputes in the restaurant and technology industries. Schalet grew up on Long Island and graduated from George Washington University with honors and before going to law school worked as a counselor in a South Bronx public school, where students earned credits working for local businesses. As a young public defender, she gained valuable trial experience and became confident in her courtroom skills and trial persona. She eventually chose to move on to employment work and joined the New York City Commission on Human Rights' Law Enforcement Bureau, where she litigated cutting-edge sexual harassment, disability and sexual orientation workplace harassment claims arising under the New York City Human Rights Law.

By 1991, just as the Anita Hill hearings riveted the nation on sexual-harassment issues, Ms. Schalet was involved in groundbreaking cases dealing with physical and verbal abuse of females in traditionally male-dominated environments. She has been the lead advocate in many cases involving sexual harassment and unequal pay and working conditions on Wall Street for women and minorities and is known for a string of comprehensive settlements in the financial services industry. In the mid-90s, she was recruited by Lipman & Plesur, LLP, a rapidly growing Jericho-based employment law firm. She was named a partner in 2003, and has remained with the firm as its principal Manhattan attorney ever since. Although she continues to regularly appear in court to advocate her clients' cases, by her own estimation, Schalet has evolved into something of an "advocate-negotiator" for her clients, reflecting the movement of workplace disputes away from the courtroom and into alternative forms of dispute resolution. Today she emphasizes a detailed, goal-oriented approach. She seeks to achieve a fair and strong result that is respectful of her client's contributions and accomplishments, without resorting to drawn out and unnecessary litigation. She passionately believes that employees who have workplace disputes or are owed back wages and overtime are best served by focusing on resolution and results. While Schalet and her team file cases in court as necessary, they believe that all parties are well-served by achieving an effective and efficient result. She enjoys reading historical fiction, travel and community service in her Brooklyn, New York neighborhood.