Valdi Licul

Valdi Licul is a Partner at Wigdor LLP. Valdi is a highly accomplished civil rights attorney who has devoted his 25-year career to the representation of plaintiffs in employment and anti-discrimination cases.

Valdi has represented numerous high-earning plaintiffs in high-profile, contentious matters involving sexual harassment, discrimination based on sex, pregnancy, race, age, national origin, disability, religion and/or sexual orientation, whistleblower retaliation, executive compensation, breach of contract, restrictive covenants, trade secrets, defamation, wage and hour violations, and other employment-related disputes.

Valdi’s trial verdicts, arbitration awards and confidential settlements total in the tens of millions of dollars.

Valdi represents clients across a wide range of industries, including financial services, private equity, accounting, law, tech, healthcare, sports, media and entertainment, education, real estate, architecture, transportation, telecommunications, fashion and others.

Valdi has been advising clients in the financial services industry under New York’s new 2022 whistleblower law who allege corporate wrongdoing including defrauding shareholders, misrepresenting the value of assets and front running.

He is a frequent speaker on employment law matters, an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and Board Member of the Federal Bar Council, where he co-chairs the Employment Litigation Committee.

Prior to joining Wigdor, Valdi spent over 16 years at a prominent plaintiff-side labor and employment law firm, where he represented workers in employment-related disputes in federal and state court, as well as in arbitration. He was also a member of the Special Litigation and Appeals Unit of the Mental Hygiene Legal Service for the Appellate Division, Second Department, where he represented disabled individuals in civil rights matters.

He previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Lois Bloom, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York.

Publicity

Valdi’s complex and high‐profile matters have received significant media attention in outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Law Journal, USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, Time, CBS New York, NBC Sports, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, Buzzfeed News, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Daily Mail, ABA Journal, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Business Insurance, The Real Deal and Ad Age.

Valdi frequently speaks on employment-related legal issues. He regularly lectures at the New York City Bar Association on a variety of legal topics, including disability rights in the workplace, reasonable accommodations for employees with mental health disabilities, legal issues in the hiring process, alternative dispute resolution, drafting and negotiating employment agreements and settlement agreements, and other key employment topics.

He often trains and teaches lawyers and judges on topical employment issues for the Practising Law Institute, Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS), Legal Services Corporation, the Federal Bar Council, Strafford Publications and other leading educational forums.

Notable Cases

While most matters handled by Valdi have resulted in confidential, out-of-court settlements before a lawsuit is even filed, some of his notable public cases include:

• Represented a former senior sales representative in an age discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against textbook publisher McGraw-Hill, which resulted in a jury verdict of over $350,000;
• Represented a female sports executive in a high-profile lawsuit against the New York Mets and its co-owner Jeffrey Wilpon alleging unlawful discrimination based on gender, pregnancy and marital status and retaliation;
• Represented a former associate attorney in an age discrimination lawsuit against a midsize law firm;
• Represented a former 9/11 survivor in a disability discrimination lawsuit against the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in connection with Plaintiffs’ request for reasonable accommodations related to his post-traumatic stress disorder; and
• Represented a class of criminal defendants who were confined to a forensic psychiatric facility and who had been found incapacitated to stand trial in a widely influential class action against the former Commissioner of the New York State Office of Mental Health, alleging unlawful disclosure of HIV status and other confidential medical and psychiatric information in violation of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
  

Pro Bono and Community Involvement

Valdi frequently trains judges and other lawyers on employment law issues. He is a member of the Second Circuit’s Pro Bono Panel, representing pro se litigants in civil appeals in connection with complex employment and civil rights cases. He serves as pro bono counsel in employment mediation matters in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Valdi co-chairs the Employment Litigation Committee of the Federal Bar Council and is an advisor for the Federal Bar Council’s Access to Counsel Project, which aims to increase and enhance pro bono representation of civil pro se litigants in the courts of the Second Circuit. He also served on the Disability Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.

Valdi enjoys mentoring future generations of lawyers and trains them as the legal landscape evolves and changes. In addition to being an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law, he guest lectures at Columbia Law School, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and New York Law School.

He also served as a Moot Court Judge for the Annual National Moot Court Competition, the Judge Paul Joseph Kelly, Jr. Invitational Trial Competition at Fordham University School of Law, the Annual Yale Invitational and the Moot Court Competition at the Maurice A. Dean School of Law at Hofstra University.

Awards

Valdi is ranked in Chambers USA Labor and Employment mainly plaintiff and has been selected to the Super Lawyers list for the past two years, a designation reserved for the top 5% of attorneys in New York. He has also received an AV Preeminent Rating from Martindale Hubbell in recognition of his extraordinary level of professional achievement.

Education

J.D., Brooklyn Law School

M.A. cum laude and B.A. with honors, New York Institute of Technology

Admitted

• New York
• U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
• U.S. District Court for the Eastern Districts of New York
• U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals
• U.S. Supreme Court