“Understanding the interests and strategies of all parties is indispensable for an effective advocate or neutral.”
Paul Holtzman joined the firm in 1992. Paul’s practice has been comprised of a mix of trial work and alternative dispute resolution in employment law, sexual harassment, wage and hour, civil rights, commercial and partnership disputes. He maintains an active practice as a mediator and arbitrator. The recipient of numerous awards, Paul was recognized in 2016 as Boston Employment Lawyer of the Year by U.S. News & World Report.
Building on his decades of experience as an advocate, Paul serves as a mediator in employment, business and civil rights disputes for the American Arbitration Association and through a private mediation practice. Paul has successfully resolved over two hundred cases involving claims of discrimination, harassment, employee misclassification, overtime disputes, non-payment of wages and commissions, failure to accommodate disabilities, non-competition agreements, contract and partnership disputes, as well as commercial cases ranging from construction contract disputes to claims of defective products.
As a member of the American Arbitration Association’s National Panel of Employment Arbitrators, Paul serves as an arbitrator on a wide variety of employment disputes. He has handled matters ranging from wage and hour class actions to claims of sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, breach of contract, breach of non-competition agreements and disability discrimination. In addition, he has served as mediator and arbitrator for a university’s joint labor-management committee on issues of employee classification.
Paul has litigated dozens of discrimination, non-competition, overtime compensation, wage and hour, misclassification, contract and tort cases for employees as well as employers in federal and state courts. Other practice areas include contract, commercial and partnership disputes, claims under the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as public accommodation claims.
Among his public service activities, Paul served on the Board of Editors of the Boston Bar Journal and as Co-Chair of the Labor & Employment Section of the Boston Bar Association. He filed an amicus curiae brief in the landmark marriage equality case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, where he argued on behalf of a coalition of national civil rights organizations.
He served as an Adviser to the American Law Institute (ALI) on the 2015 inaugural Restatement of Employment Law. He has published a number of articles on employment law for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and other publications and is frequently quoted in articles on workplace issues.
In 2019, he chaired panel presentations on employment law at the Judicial Retreat and Bench-Bar Conference of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He is the co-author of “Availability of Insurance Coverage for Employment Claims” in the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) treatise entitled “Massachusetts Employment Law.”
Paul is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and a graduate of Yale Law School, where he served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Review. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Pierre N. Leval in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He also practiced in Washington, D.C., at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
