Alexander Krakow + Glick LLP

J. Bernard Alexander and Gail W. Glick were prolific plaintiff employment lawyers who identified a void.

Most California plaintiffs' employment outfits either had a few dozen lawyers or were funky, small offices with one or two attorneys. Alexander and Glick wanted to create a firm that did only work for aggrieved workers and was more than a mom-and-pop law office, but an office that could also handle complex class actions and novel anti-discrimination cases.

Alexander recruited an office suite mate, Marvin E. Krakow and his associate lawyer, Tracy L. Fehr. The quartet sought a proper lawyerly locale in Century City but fell in love with a more affordable spot in Santa Monica, and they started Alexander, Krakow & Glick LLP in 2009.

The Santa Monica location has proved a calming atmosphere for themselves and their clients, an antidote from the stressful world of employment litigation that can be both complicated and emotional.

"We made it a place where clients want to come," Glick said. "After a stressful conversation with a lawyer, you can take a walk on the beach." Krakow said that the four were nervous at first, but each were established plaintiff lawyers and they have progressively built their practice.

Fehr is now a partner who specializes in appellate work. They brought on Michael S. Morrison of counsel to focus upon unpaid wage class actions, and also hired five associates.

Some of the more prominent cases that brought Alexander, Krakow & Glick LLP money and notoriety have been civil rights and anti-discrimination lawsuits brought by Alexander. The lawyer, for example, won millions of dollars on behalf of clients who alleged discrimination by the Westminster Police Department, a case that was resolved in 2014.

More recently, a downtown Los Angeles jury awarded Alexander's client, Mark Flores, a startling $10 million in a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against his former employer, Office Depot Inc.

Jurors agreed with Flores's account that Office Depot marginalized and eventually terminated him after he refused to fire two older workers, and took a leave of absence to recover from surgery.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Daniel S. Murphy, however, reduced the verdict. Alexander appealed, and the case settled for a confidential amount. Flores v. Office Depot Inc., BC556713 (Los Angeles Super. Ct. Feb. 6, 2017).

Most plaintiff victories are much smaller, the lawyers said, in large part because many of the clients who knock on their door have signed agreements with their boss to individually arbitrate claims.

"Arbitration is a deliberate project of corporate America to deprive people of their jury rights," Krakow said. He added many companies and law firms regularly use the same arbitrator, and that arbitrator has a financial interest to see those businesses again.

Despite their strong misgivings with arbitration, the firm also said that they have won cases within that system.

Alexander noted, for example, that an arbitrator awarded his client, Holland Campbell, $500,000 in punitive damages against Fuse Media, a decision that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Mooney entered into judgment in July.

Eight years after their firm started, Glick said, there are no other firms that do exactly what Alexander, Krakow & Glick does. The lawyers note firms that do similar work with a similar budget tend to also take on non-employment civil rights cases.

While proud of their own success, the founding lawyers stress that the California plaintiff employment lawyer community is a collaborative one, and they do not see anyone who they vie with for the best cases.

"With so much discrimination out there," Alexander said, "we don't really compete for business."

-- Matthew Blake