Ty Derek Frankel

Ty Frankel is an Employment Law and Class Action attorney. He represents clients before federal and state courts and agencies in a wide variety of class action and employment law matters and has extensive experience litigating and providing counsel related to wage and hour, equal pay, wrongful discharge, retaliation, discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile work environment, and related claims.

Mr. Frankel’s practice is primarily devoted to wage and hour litigation. He has litigated numerous national, regional, and state-wide class and collective actions on behalf of employees seeking to recover unpaid overtime and minimum wage against businesses of all sizes, ranging from local companies to publicly traded corporations.

Mr. Frankel has navigated his cases through each stage of litigation, including the initial case investigation, filing the complaint, class and collective action certification, engaging in discovery and depositions, dispositive motion practice, pretrial procedures, trial, and appeal.

Mr. Frankel is proud to have represented workers in litigation to recover unpaid wages by challenging corporate practices violating federal and state wage and hour laws.

His experience includes litigation representing:
• workers misclassified as independent contractors, independent operators, or independent franchisees who should be receiving benefits as employees, plus minimum wage and overtime, because their work is dependent on and controlled by the company they work for;
• workers misclassified as salaried exempt when they should be entitled to overtime because the duties they perform are routine as opposed to managerial in nature;
• sales employees whose bonuses and incentive pay should be calculated into their overtime rate;
• call center sales employees who spend greater than ten minutes per day loading their systems before they are clocked in;
• employees required to perform work duties off-the-clock before, during, and after their scheduled shifts;
• employees required to put on and take off personal protective equipment necessary to perform their job without compensation for that time;
• workers required to remain on-call and engaged to wait during downtime that they are not paid for;
• laborers not paid for drive time after picking up equipment at headquarters and then driving to job sites throughout the day;
• workers who have training costs deducted from their paychecks causing their wages to fall below the minimum wage; and
• legal assistants and paralegals not paid overtime at time and half their regular rate for hours over forty in a workweek.

Mr. Frankel was included in the 2022, 2023, and 2024 edition of the Best Lawyers®: Ones to Watch in America for his work in Labor and Employment Law.  Mr. Frankel is proud to have been nominated by his peers as a Super Lawyers’ Southwest Rising Star for his litigation work on behalf employees. For years, Mr. Frankel has served as a contributor for the American Bar Association Treatise on the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is the federal law mandating minimum wage and overtime for most workers across the United States. He has also been a contributor to the Arizona Republic regarding a wide array of employment law issues.

Mr. Frankel has experience counseling employers about employment law practices and litigation, including matters involving compensation practices, employment policies, hiring, separation from employment, internal workplace investigations, and discrimination charges.

Mr. Frankel is active in community service. He serves on the Board of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which is the only organization in Arizona that provides pro bono legal services to vulnerable immigrants in detention, many of whom are refugees. He served as President of the Board during implementation of the Trump administration’s family separation policy, which resulted in immigrant children being separated from their parents at the border. During his tenure as President, the organization grew from just under 40 to more than 150 employees because of a significant increase in donations. This growth enabled the organization to better respond to the family separation crisis and provide even more widespread services to immigrant children and adults detained in Arizona. In addition to his time serving on the Board, Mr. Frankel has also provided pro bono legal services on behalf of immigrants and refugees.

Mr. Frankel earned his law degree from Boston College Law School, graduating cum laude. During law school, he was a LEND Fellow at the Boston Children’s Hospital, where he studied legal and public policy concerning children with developmental disabilities. He was also a Student Attorney at the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Project, representing clients before the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service and Immigration Court. Mr. Frankel attended his first year of law school at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans where he earned positions on the Loyola Law Review and Moot Court Staff, as well as the Legal Excellence Award in Property and Torts.

Mr. Frankel earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College in political science and communications. During his undergraduate education, he was an Immigration Intern in the Senate office of the Honorable Edward M. Kennedy for several years.

Mr. Frankel is admitted to practice in Arizona and Massachusetts.