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Wigdor Alumni Join Forces At New Employment Law Firm

June 13, 2022

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author bio pic of Parisis G. Filippatos

Written by Lily Filippatos

Brought to you by Filippatos Empoyment Law, Litigation & ADR

Law360 (June 9, 2022, 4:00 PM EDT) — One alumnus of Wigdor LLP, the
plaintiff-side law firm known for its high-profile employment cases taking
on the National Football League and Fox News, has nabbed another
Wigdor graduate to help build a similar newly-established employment law
firm.

Tanvir Rahman has been named a partner of Gerry Filippatos’ practice,
Filippatos PLLC, an employment law firm focusing on workplace
retaliation, discrimination and harassment suits. Rahman, who spent
about a decade working at Wigdor before starting his own practice, told
Law360 on Wednesday he’s excited for the opportunity to help build an
up-and-coming firm.

“There’s a lot of room to make a big dent up here,” Rahman said.
“Growing this business and firm is something that I wanted to do.”

Filippatos also worked at Wigdor for about a year during the height of the
pandemic, but he told Law360 that he left and started his own firm in
March 2021. He described the firm as one that’s ready to take on high
profile cases without leaving in the dust other legitimate complaints that
might be less newsworthy or more routine.

When he heard Rahman had also started an independent practice after his
time at Wigdor, Filippatos said he felt compelled to invite into his practice
a lawyer with a shared entrepreneurial spirit.

“We’re really poised to grow exponentially,” Filippatos said. “We’ve already
enjoyed quite a bit of success in our short time, so I’m really looking
forward to growing the practice with Tanvir.”

After his decade-long ride at Wigdor, where he eventually became a senior attorney, Rahman said he
wanted to try running his own practice to have more discretion over his cases. Filippatos offered him
the partner position over lunch, he said, and while he wasn’t expecting it, he said, he couldn’t pass it
up. He started with Filippatos on June 1.

In the new partner position, Rahman said, he plans to continue with the employment law practices he
became familiar with at Wigdor. He said he has worked on wage and hour cases as well as sexual
harassment and gender discrimination suits.

Rahman said he was a part of the team that litigated Deborah Dugan’s suit against the Recording
Academy, which operates the Grammys, alleging it fired her from her chief executive position after
she complained about sexual harassment. The suit was resolved in a confidential settlement.

As he comes from a first-generation American family, Rahman said, recovering unlawfully withheld
tips and wages for restaurant employees in wage and hour suits is also important to his work.

“My dad works in the restaurant industry,” Rahman said. “Being able to represent people like him, a
lot of people who are new to the country, really trying to build a life here and being cheated out of
the tips they earned or their minimum wage, is something that I really take pride in working on.”

Both Rahman and Filippatos said they have great respect for the founders at Wigdor. Rahman said
Wigdor is where he learned to become a meticulous and detail-oriented lawyer — skills he said he
wants to bring to up-and-coming attorneys at Filippatos.

In his new role, Rahman said, he’ll be watching to see how race discrimination cases may be
affected by changing cultural tides and the understanding that racism does not have to be overt to
cause discrimination. He said he’s also interested to see how the pandemic and the shift to remote
work may affect the future of workplace discrimination or harassment suits.

“There could be a couple of people who forgot how to behave in the workplace,” he said.

–Editing by Covey Son.

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