Many workers who face discrimination at work have never dealt with anything like it before. They don’t know what proof they’ll need and they don’t know if it makes sense financially to go after a case at all. Workplace discrimination lawyers are trained to help answer these questions. Their job is to take what happened to you and turn it into a legal claim that can hold up in court.
One of the biggest problems is that discrimination almost never shows up in an obvious way. Your employer isn’t going to tell you that they’re demoting you because of your age. They’re not going to admit that they denied your accommodations because of your disability. Discrimination usually shows up as a pattern instead. Maybe you’re a pregnant employee who suddenly gets negative reviews after years of glowing feedback. Or you’re an older worker who gets left out of meetings right before the company announces layoffs. Or maybe you reported harassment and now you get written up for minor issues that never mattered before.
Retaliation claims actually made up almost 48% of the 88,531 charges that employees filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2024. Most retaliation claims came from the same situation as the original discrimination complaint.
Let’s talk about how these attorneys look at your case and what representation is going to cost you from your very first consultation all the way through to the resolution. Here’s how these lawyers can help to protect your rights.
The Most Common Types of Workplace Discrimination
Not every unfair situation at work is actually discrimination under the law. The main factor that matters is why your employer treated you unfairly in the first place. The best strategy is to prove whether it was because of something protected like your race or your age or a disability. If your boss is terrible to everyone on the team equally then you’re just stuck with a bad workplace. It’s probably not illegal discrimination though.
Say you’re pregnant and all your coworkers get to work from home whenever they want. Your manager suddenly makes you come into the office every day. It doesn’t even make sense given that everyone else has flexibility. This could maybe be pregnancy discrimination because the policy change seems aimed right at you and your condition specifically. Or take a company layoff where every person who is over 50 gets cut from the team. The younger workers with way less experience all get to stay in their jobs. That type of pattern can point to age discrimination even when nobody says anything directly about older workers out loud.
Federal law now protects more groups of workers than it used to decades ago. In 2020 the Supreme Court decided a case that was called Bostock v. Clayton County. The court ruled that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity actually breaks federal law. This was really big news for LGBTQ+ employees across the country. Many states hadn’t offered them much protection before that ruling came down.
Discrimination cases can look pretty different depending on what happens to you at work. Retaliation is one common type, and this typically happens after you complain about unfair treatment. Your employer might demote you right after you report harassment to HR. Maybe your boss suddenly starts assigning you the absolute worst projects in the department. Another type is a hostile work environment where comments or behavior from coworkers get so bad that you can’t do your job anymore. These situations all fall under discrimination law. But each one calls for a different type of evidence to back up what actually happened to you.
Your First Meeting with the Lawyer
Most workplace discrimination lawyers will give you a free consultation when you call them for the first time. It’s where you get to talk about what happened to you at work. During this conversation, they’re trying to see if your situation might turn into a legal case. Some worry that their experience isn’t bad enough. Others think that maybe they don’t have the right evidence to move forward with a claim. Lawyers review your story in a way that’s probably different from how you’ve thought about it.
Lawyers want to see patterns instead of just one bad day at work. A single rude comment from your boss usually won’t be enough to build a case on its own. Multiple incidents over time start to look like a problem worth pursuing. Written records can help a lot here because they prove what happened and when it happened. Emails work well as proof. Text messages and performance reviews can help quite a bit too.
Your attorney will also ask about any witnesses who saw or heard what took place. A strong case connects your experience to laws that protect workers from discrimination. Federal and state laws list out protected categories like race or disability. Your case has to fit somewhere within these protected categories in order to move forward.
Sometimes a situation won’t move forward for technical reasons. Maybe too much time has passed since the incident and the filing deadline has expired. Employers in some states can fire employees for almost any reason as long as it’s not illegal. A minor incident could turn out to be part of a bigger pattern. Once your lawyer digs deeper into what happened, more information usually surfaces.
Your attorney also has to think about if the possible result is worth all the time and money involved. Legal costs add up pretty fast for these types of cases.
How Your Lawyer Gets Paid?
Money is probably your biggest concern. After everything that workplace discrimination has already cost you, a lawyer on top of that seems out of reach. Most victims don’t know how employment discrimination attorneys actually get paid.
Most workplace discrimination lawyers work on a contingency fee basis. So, they only get paid if you actually win your case. The standard fee sits somewhere between 33% and 40% of your final settlement or award amount. You won’t owe your attorney a single dollar for all the time that they spent on it if you lose your case.
This arrangement makes sense for everyone in the process. Your lawyer wants to win just as much as you do and that means you’re after the same result. Anyone who has dealt with workplace discrimination can fight back without thousands of dollars in the bank.
A 40% fee might sound high. Your lawyer takes on all the financial burden in this arrangement though. Attorneys will spend months or years on your case without any guarantee of payment whatsoever. Overhead and staff costs come out of their own pocket the entire time that they work to get you compensated.
Fees and costs are two different matters and there is confusion about this distinction all the time. Fees represent what your lawyer earns for their legal work. Costs are different. They’re expenses like court filing fees or payments to expert witnesses. Some lawyers cover all the costs up front and then deduct them from your settlement later on. Others may ask you to pay some costs as you go even though the contingency fee arrangement covers their fees.
Lawyers take on this burden because they believe in your case.
How to File with the EEOC
Once you settle on payment with your attorney, there’s another step that you have to finish first. Federal law actually says that you need to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before anything else. Discrimination cases can’t skip straight to court like some other cases do. The EEOC needs to review your complaint and then give you official permission to sue.
This extra step gives each side a legitimate chance to reach a resolution without ever setting foot in a courtroom. The process also helps the EEOC to track discrimination patterns across different employers and to address the worst violations when they surface.
Deadlines are serious with discrimination cases and you can’t afford to miss them. Most states will only give you somewhere between 180 and 300 days from when the discrimination happened to file your complaint. Miss that window and your case gets thrown out before it can even get a fair hearing. A lawyer can keep you ahead of this deadline if you contact them early enough in the process.
Once you file your complaint with the EEOC, you’re in for a bit of a wait. The review process usually takes anywhere from 6 months to a full year to finish. During that time, the EEOC may investigate your employer on your behalf. They might interview witnesses or ask for internal records from the company. In rare situations, they might even take legal action against the employer themselves.
The EEOC will eventually issue you what’s called a “right to sue” letter. This letter is your official means to proceed with a lawsuit in court. Sometimes, they issue this letter after they’ve finished their full review. At other times, they’ll send it early at your request if you want to move forward faster.
Your lawyer will use this waiting period as an opportunity to build your case. It’s when your records start to matter.
Save the Evidence You Need
Your lawyer can only work with what you actually give them. The records and proof you save are going to make or break your entire case. Without strong backup for your claims, the best attorney in the world will have a tough time showing that discrimination actually took place.
Most employees don’t save proof of what’s going on because they’re just trying to survive at work. Every day takes all your energy just to get through. Proof doesn’t cross your mind at all because you’re still holding out hope that it will somehow get better on its own. Some employees also worry that records could look suspicious or cause even more problems if anyone finds out.
A paper trail needs to start as early as possible in the process. Save every relevant email while you still have access to your work account. Keep a detailed journal with exact dates and times for each incident. Write down who saw each event happen. Your boss might claim that you did poor work but your reviews show something different, so save copies of your reviews somewhere safe outside of work.
Electronic proof has changed the game for discrimination cases. Slack messages between coworkers can show bias that employees would never say out loud. Text chains with your supervisor might show a pattern that builds over weeks or months. Metadata from documents can prove when someone created or changed them. Computer clues like these can give lawyers the smoking gun that cases from decades ago never had access to.
Whatever you do, don’t delete anything from your devices or accounts. Also don’t post about your situation on social media at all. Employers and their legal teams will search for what you’ve posted online. Your own words can get twisted and used against you in ways that you never imagined were possible.
The more detailed your records are, the stronger the position that your lawyer starts from when they take on your case. You give them all the building blocks they need to construct a winning argument.
Your Case from Start to Finish
After your lawyer officially agrees to take on your case, the work actually starts. Your attorney begins to dig into everything and to collect all the relevant documents for your situation. Witnesses who can back up your claim will get interviewed during this phase as well. The legal world calls this phase discovery, and it tends to move at a pretty slow pace (especially in those early weeks).
Once the investigation phase finishes up, most lawyers are going to try to negotiate some settlement with your employer before anything else happens. The court isn’t usually the first step in the process. Plenty of businesses would prefer to settle these matters privately instead of going through a public trial. Your lawyer will probably bring up mediation as an option. Mediation is when a neutral third party meets with you and with the employer to help everyone reach an agreement.
These types of cases can drag on for quite a while. The timeline could be a few months on the shorter end, or it could stretch into years if everything ends up going to trial. Plenty of clients get frustrated with how long it all takes when they want justice right now. The wait can also be emotionally draining. In many cases, this ends up being one of the hardest parts for most clients. Depositions and endless legal paperwork force you to go back through the tough experiences over and over again.
You should stay in touch with your lawyer throughout this entire process. It really matters. Anything that happens at work early on should get shared with them as quickly as you can. Maybe your employer suddenly switches up your schedule on you. Or a coworker reaches out with new information about what had happened. Updates like these can change the direction of your case in some pretty big ways.
Most discrimination cases will settle before they ever reach a courtroom. The settlement amount you get could be disappointing. No dollar amount can make up for what you went through. The litigation process brings its own stress. Plenty of clients don’t know beforehand just how emotionally draining it all can be.
The legal process has changed quite a bit. Video depositions are pretty standard now, and you might not need to show up at a conference room. Arbitration clauses are another big change you need to be aware of. Some employment contracts include these clauses, and they can force your case into private arbitration instead of an open courtroom. Your lawyer should have dealt with all these scenarios and will know the best way to work with your goals.
Do You Need Help From a Lawyer?
If you feel that they have been the victim of workplace discrimination, you can take steps. You must have quality legal advice in these matters. Contact an experienced discrimination lawyer today to determine whether you have experienced workplace discrimination and how to correct the situation.
Workplace discrimination can be scary to go through on your own and the right lawyer to work with can make you feel far less alone in this. Your very first consultation is your chance to sit down with an attorney and actually tell your story about what’s been happening at work. After that first meeting comes the EEOC complaint process and your case might even lead to a formal lawsuit down the line. An experienced employment law attorney by your side can make a massive difference at every step. The legal system feels tough when you’re trying to work through it alone and employment discrimination lawyers are there for you in this exact situation.
Most employees need some help to figure out when something crosses the line from unfair treatment to actually illegal discrimination. Lots of employees doubt themselves and think maybe they’re overreacting to what happened. Discrimination cases get built on the experiences and the patterns in how employees were treated over time. When you’ve been treated differently at work because of who you are instead of how well you perform at your job, that deserves attention. Employment protection laws are there for a reason and when you turn to them to defend yourself, that doesn’t make you a troublemaker or a problem employee.
It doesn’t take any big commitment up front from you to find answers and that’s great news. The majority of workplace discrimination lawyers will review your case without charging you for anything at the beginning. Professional advice about your situation is available without legal bills piling up before you’ve even figured out your options.
Your attorney will look over everything that has happened and explain the different paths that are available to you. From there the two of you can decide together if filing a claim makes sense for your situation.
The right lawyer who understands your goals is your first step. At LegalMatch, you can connect with qualified attorneys who work on workplace discrimination cases in your area. Your lawyer will review everything that has happened, talk about the legal process from start to finish and fight for your rights at every step.
