Bryan Schwartz Law, P.C.

Focus and practice areas

The firm represents workers who are in disputes with their employers. Its practice covers discrimination, retaliation, and harassment claims. It also handles reasonable accommodation matters for disabled employees, whistleblower claims, overtime and wage issues, severance, and federal employment cases.

All of that stays inside one field, employment and labor law. Discrimination and harassment claims deal with how a worker is treated on the job. Wage and overtime claims deal with how a worker is paid. Reasonable accommodation work covers the adjustments a disabled employee needs to keep doing the job. Whistleblower claims protect people who report conduct they believe breaks the law. Federal employment cases apply the separate rules that public-sector jobs run under.

The firm takes both individual cases and class or collective actions, and it litigates them nationwide. In my opinion, that pairing is the useful thing to know about how it operates. A single harassment claim and a wage class covering hundreds of people ask for different resources, and the firm runs both kinds.

How the team is built

The attorneys page lists four lawyers: Bryan Schwartz, Renato Flores, Sam Goity, and Erica Posey. Bryan Schwartz gives the firm its name and leads its employment and labor work in litigation and class actions.

He earned his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. His cases involve discrimination, retaliation, harassment, disability accommodations, whistleblower claims, and unpaid wages. That range matches the practice areas the firm lists, so the lead attorney's own work and the firm's stated focus point the same way.

Four attorneys is a small group for litigation that can involve hundreds of class members at once. A roster that size usually means the firm selects its matters and staffs each one closely. The size of the reported cases, set against a four-lawyer roster, shows how much a small team can carry.

What the record shows

The appraiser case is the firm's highest-value reported result. In a matter brought for residential real estate appraisers, the firm won class certification for more than 700 workers who had been classified as exempt. The exempt label had kept those workers off overtime pay. Bank of America then paid $48.8 million to settle claims that those appraisers were owed overtime, and Terry Boyd was the named plaintiff.

Two more reported results appear on the site. One is a $37.5 million discrimination settlement. The other is a jury verdict of about $950,000 for a restaurant worker named Angela Quiles, in a wage case. A jury verdict and a settlement reach a number in different ways. A settlement is an agreement between the two sides, while a verdict is a figure a jury decided after a trial.

Wage and overtime cases like the appraiser matter often turn on job classification. An employer that labels a role exempt avoids paying overtime on it, and a challenge asks whether the actual work met that exemption. Winning certification for a class of more than 700 means the court agreed their claims were alike enough to try together. That is the harder half of a wage class action, and the firm cleared it in that case.

How these cases usually run

Employment claims tend to start with an internal record, such as a complaint to human resources or a request for an accommodation. The record a worker keeps early often decides how strong the later claim is. Federal employment cases often move through an administrative agency before a court sees them, so timing and paperwork matter early. Class and collective actions add a step, because the court first decides whether one lawsuit can stand in for a group of workers.

Retaliation claims often ride alongside the others. A worker who reports harassment or files a wage complaint is protected from being punished for it, and a retaliation claim tests whether the employer crossed that line. Because the firm handles the underlying claims and the retaliation that can follow, one matter can carry more than one legal theory.

Severance work happens at a different stage, closer to the end of a job than a lawsuit. It usually means reviewing the terms an employer offers a departing employee and negotiating them. The firm lists severance among its areas, alongside the litigation that fills most of its reported record.

Reach and current intake

The firm works with private-sector employees and with federal workers, and it handles complaints nationwide. Its cases have reached courts outside California. For an Oakland firm of this size, that national reach comes largely from the class and collective work, where one case can cover workers in many places. A worker in another state can be part of a California-filed class, which is how a single office reaches that far.

The site states the firm has paused new client intake because of its current caseload. It asks people with existing matters, and class members in pending cases, to make contact, and it points visitors to check back in November 2026. As a reviewer, I read that as a firm keeping its attention on the litigation it already carries. The site does not list a founding year.

Federal administrative venues

Bryan Schwartz has represented federal employees in proceedings before the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Those named venues add useful detail to the firm's public-sector work. They show experience with employment matters that proceed through federal administrative systems rather than beginning as ordinary civil lawsuits.

The record does not tie that experience to a single type of dispute. It places the administrative work within Schwartz's broader employee-side practice. For a federal worker comparing firms, prior work before both bodies is a concrete point to consider because it identifies the forums in which he has represented employees.

Bryan Schwartz's career record

Schwartz earned his juris doctor degree in 2000. He has practiced at Bryan Schwartz Law since 2009, which gives the record a clear starting point for his work under the firm's name. Before that, he was managing attorney in the San Francisco office of Nichols Kaster, LLP.

That earlier management role adds context beyond the matters listed on the firm's site. It connects his current Oakland practice to prior responsibility for another law office in the Bay Area. The record does not provide dates for the Nichols Kaster position, but it establishes that the role came before his work at Bryan Schwartz Law.

Office and contact details

The office is at 180 Grand Ave., Suite 1380, Oakland, California 94612. The suite number matters for anyone sending documents or arriving for a scheduled meeting because the street address alone does not identify the firm's location within the building.

The record provides two telephone numbers. The first is 888-891-8489, and the second is 510-444-9300. The firm's website is bryanschwartzlaw.com. Together, these details give existing clients and class members direct ways to locate the office or reach the firm about an active matter.