Schotter Millican, LLP

What the firm covers

The firm handles workers' compensation cases for people hurt on the job across New York City. Its clients are injured workers, tradespeople, and laborers. Geoffrey Schotter and Amy Millican built the practice in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and both hold the title of managing partner. The 2020 start put the firm's opening in the same period that produced COVID-19 workplace claims, one of the categories it now lists.

The firm covers one area of law, and it stays there. Workers' compensation in New York runs through its own board and its own filing deadlines, so a firm that does this daily knows the routine. In my opinion, that narrow focus is the most useful thing a reader can take from the site. The site frames the firm around that single practice, which helps a reader match a problem to the right office quickly.

The range of claims it takes

Inside workers' compensation, the firm names claim types well beyond the obvious accident case. It handles workplace accidents and construction injuries. It also takes healthcare worker injuries, repetitive strain injuries, occupational exposure, and occupational hearing loss.

The list runs further than the common categories. The firm handles 9/11 Ground Zero participant claims, workplace assault claims, mental stress claims, and COVID-19 claims. It takes death benefits, retaliation claims, and workers' compensation appeals as well. The about page also lists personal injury, which covers harm caused by a party other than the employer.

Some of these categories carry their own procedures. A 9/11 claim involves people who worked at or around Ground Zero and later developed a health condition, and such claims run through dedicated programs with set filing windows. Occupational hearing loss and occupational exposure cases turn on medical evidence that ties the condition to the work. These conditions can surface years after the exposure, so dating the injury becomes part of the case. As a reviewer, I note that a firm listing these categories by name has framed its scope in the terms a hurt worker would search for.

How these cases usually move

Workers' compensation in New York follows a set path, and a firm's job is to move a claim along it. A worker reports the injury, files a claim with the state board, and gets the medical treatment documented for the file. If the insurer disputes the claim, the case goes to a hearing before a workers' compensation law judge, who takes evidence and issues a decision. The firm's named services line up with these stages, the initial claim and the contested hearing included. Appeals extend that line past the hearing decision.

Medical proof carries a lot of weight at each stage. In an occupational hearing loss or exposure case, the claim depends on a doctor tying the condition to the work. In an accident case, it depends on records that show what happened and how serious the harm is. A firm that works these cases daily builds the file with that standard of proof in mind.

How the team is set up

The site names four people, and the roles split between law and operations. Geoffrey Schotter and Amy Millican lead as managing partners. Joel Fredericson holds the title of senior advisor, and Sarah Hummell is the chief financial and operations officer.

That last role is worth a note. For a firm started in 2020, a named finance and operations officer this early points to partners who wanted the business side handled by someone whose job it is. The two managing partners carry the legal work, which keeps the casework with the named lawyers at the top of Schotter Millican, LLP.

How the firm works with clients

The firm offers its services in English, Spanish, and Polish. In a city with large Spanish-speaking and Polish-speaking communities, that choice widens who can use the firm without a translator in the room. Offering intake in three languages widens the pool of workers who can bring a claim in their own words. Language access counts in compensation cases, where a client has to explain how an injury happened and what work they were doing at the time.

The firm runs two offices, one in Brooklyn and one in the Forest Hills section of Queens. Two locations across two boroughs give clients in different parts of the city a place to meet closer to home. The firm takes cases on a contingency basis, so the fee comes from what the client recovers. For its online presence, the firm links a Facebook page as its listed social channel.

When a claim goes to appeal

The firm lists workers' compensation appeals among its services, which matters because many compensation cases turn on a contested decision. In New York, a disputed award or denial goes before the Workers' Compensation Board, where a panel reviews the record from the hearing below. A worker who wants to challenge a decision has a set window to file, and the appeal runs on the paperwork and testimony already in the file.

A firm that handles both the original claim and the appeal can keep the same lawyers on a case into that second stage. In my opinion, the value of naming appeals as a service is that a client can stay with one firm through a challenge to a denial. The firm has run since 2020 and works from offices in Brooklyn and Queens.

Where the two partners trained

Geoffrey Schotter grew up in New York City and earned a BA from Cornell University in 2005. He went on to a joint JD/MA program in law and legal history at Case Western Reserve University, finishing in 2011. During law school he edited the Case Western Reserve Law Review and helped start the Case Western Reserve Journal of Law, Technology and the Internet. His early work included a fellowship at the national office of the ACLU and a stretch in the labor and employment practice at Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein. He opened a solo workers' compensation practice in 2012 and folded it into Schotter Millican in 2020.

Amy Millican came to law from a different start. She holds a B.S. and a B.A. from the University of Maryland and worked in theatre management around Washington, D.C. before law school. She earned her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, and during that time she interned at two public sector labor unions and at the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance while taking labor and employment coursework. Her route into the field ran through union and public benefits work, which sits close to the claims the firm now handles.

What each partner handles

The two managing partners split along related lines. Schotter's practice covers workers' compensation, construction accidents, personal injury, and occupational disease matters, including toxic tort claims that turn on exposure. Millican's practice centers on workers' compensation, with workplace accidents, occupational disease, occupational hearing loss, and mental stress claims among the categories she names. She also works on employment matters such as wage and hour and employment discrimination.

That division gives the firm two lawyers whose focus overlaps at workers' compensation and then runs in separate directions. A construction accident case can reach Schotter's personal injury and toxic tort work, while a claim tied to hearing loss or job stress lines up with Millican's stated focus. In my view, the two profiles complement each other, and a reader trying to match a problem to a lawyer has a clear place to start.