Peter Rukin

Peter Rukin is a partner in Rukin Hyland. Peter specializes in complex employment litigation, with a focus on class wage and hour litigation, equal employment opportunity claims, and the representation of executive and professional employees in employment matters.  He is also increasingly called on to mediate employment disputes.

Peter graduated from New York University School of Law in 1991 and served as law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Harry D. Leinenweber in Chicago. Following his clerkship, he practiced at employee-side firms in Chicago (Stowell & Friedman) and New York (Vladeck Waldman Elias & Engelhard) and served as Of Counsel in the Employment Law Department at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in San Francisco, before starting his own firm in March 2003.

Peter is immediate past Chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco Labor & Employment Section Executive Committee, and is a former member of the State Bar of California Labor & Employment Section Executive Committee. He is a chapter author of the CEB Treatise California Wage and Hour Law and Litigation, and has written numerous articles on employment issues in national and state bar publications. He is also a long-time member of the San Francisco Board of the New Israel Fund.

Peter is admitted to the State Bars of California, Illinois, and New York, the bars of various district courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.

Representative Cases and Experience

Peter has represented clients in employment cases spanning three decades. He served as counsel for plaintiffs in several groundbreaking sex discrimination class actions against Wall Street investment firms, and was one of the first lawyers in California to take a wage and hour class action to trial. Peter has been mediating employment disputes since 2002, and is frequently chosen as a mediator to resolve individual and complex employment cases.