From JDSupra, Richard Reibstein discusses the second case in six months involving misclassification claims in the legal industry. Richard writes:
The first case on which we report below involves a class action lawsuit asserting independent contractor (IC) misclassification involving Lawyer.com. A plaintiff who answered calls to this well-known legal referral business alleges that he, along with others who are similarly situated, should have been classified as employees instead of ICs. The plaintiff in this case characterizes his work as a call center representative. This filing is the second such lawsuit against the legal industry in the past six months. We reported on a similar class action lawsuit in a blog post this past July, where a legal consultant sued a business providing client intake and retention services for personal injury law firms. Few industries are immune from legal challenges alleging IC misclassification, and the legal industry has now become a target of class action lawyers representing plaintiffs in lawsuits of this nature. Businesses that use an IC business model can minimize their exposure to these types of lawsuits by using a process such as IC Diagnostics (TM) to determine whether their IC relationships can be structured and documented in a manner that can meet applicable federal and state tests for IC status and, if so, how they can do so in a customized and sustainable manner.
In the Courts (3 cases)
LAWYER.COM SUED FOR IC MISCLASSIFICATION IN NEW JERSEY. A legal marketing and client support company was sued in federal court in New Jersey last month for allegedly misclassifying as ICs representatives and sales employees for Lawyer.com, a business that fields inquiries from prospective clients seeking legal representation. The plaintiff contends that Lawyer.com specified procedures and prepared scripts that he and others in his position needed to follow when responding to customer inquiries. He also asserts that Lawyer.com trained him and the other representatives, supervised them, and utilized performance metrics to evaluate workers’ performance. As a result, the complaint alleges that the plaintiff and other representatives should have been paid overtime for hours worked in excess of zero in a workweek, to which employees are entitled under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).Greenlee v. Lawyer.com Inc., No. 3:25-cv-17771 (D.N.J. Nov. 20, 2025).