Case in Human rights

Congratulations! Less than 25% of filed complaints with the New York State Division of Human Rights receive a finding of probable cause. But that does not mean that you are home free or win. The actual reality is that most employment law or employment discrimination cases settle. The ones which eventually are lost are ones where the parties did not calculate or assess the actual damages correctly or did not present all of the necessary evidence such as witnesses or documents into the record at hearing. If your facts are strong you should retain an employment lawyer. That is because the Division or more accurately an administrative law judge now has the power to force an employer to pay the employee's own private attorney's fees. That only happens when the employee wins at a hearing. But attorneys' fees paid by the employer are not that common because strong cases settle. If a skilled lawyer argues the facts persuasively almost all cases settle. The main reason they don't is because one or both sides have not calculated damages correctly. That is one reason why some of us New York employment lawyers have made videos on YouTube explaining these issues. Employment Law Reality Check is a common problem for many of these complaints. We wish the damages were huge for every case but it takes strong facts and solid witnesses to obtain sizeable damage awards. The Division schedules pre-hearing settlement conferences and when both sides have lawyers providing an Employment Law Reality Check they often meet somewhere in the middle and resolve the matter. Mediation or conciliation is best. A hearing means the likely potential of losing or of having the decision or final order go up on appeal for years. A big reason to negotiate and settle is to avoid the appeals and stress of years of litigation. Call some employment lawyers who can invest the time into your claim. Division lawyers are great but they have hundreds of cases and only so many hours in a day. Also, they sometimes may not want to provide an employment law reality check. It's not their fault. They just have to follow the law and may not want to predict best or worst case scenarios not to upset you. Private lawyers don't have an issue upsetting their own clients because their own paychecks and livelihood depend on getting the best results for each client instead of serving all of New York's citizens and doing what's best for everyone. Those goals are similar bit not identical and neither goal is wrong.