Information
Alejandro Caffarelli
Employment Lawyer - Chicago, IL: FMLA, FLSA, unpaid wages & overtime, severance, whistleblowerCaffarelli & Associates Ltd.
224 S Michigan Ste 300
Chicago, IL 60604
312-763-6880
acaffarelli@caffarelli.com
www.caffarelli.com
About Me:
Alejandro Caffarelli the founding shareholder of Caffarelli & Associates Ltd., a boutique employment law firm located in downtown Chicago. With over 15 years of experience, he has achieved success on behalf of his clients for a range of claims, including discrimination, retaliation, wages, medical leave, employment contracts, and class actions. A native of Argentina, he is fluent in Spanish and has earned a strong reputation for vigorously defending the rights of Hispanic employees. His firm has negotiated numerous six and seven-figure settlements.
What distinguishes Mr. Caffarelli from many of his peers in the plaintiffs’ bar is that he also handles high level management-side work. He is a lawyer’s lawyer who takes pride in having represented a number of law firms in their own employment disputes. Prior to founding Caffarelli & Associates Ltd., he worked at a mid-size management-side only firm, where, among other things, he helped draft the successful appellate brief in support of enforcing a confidentiality agreement on behalf of Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo, Inc. The appellate court’s decision is now viewed as one of the seminal resources for defining the proper parameters of employee confidentiality agreements. Coady v. Harpo, Inc., 719 N.E.2d. 244 (Ill. Ct. App. 1999). In 2008, the City of Chicago awarded Mr. Caffarelli the position of Special Assistants Corporation Counsel and appointed him to defend the City in two class action cases brought against the City with combined total potential damages in the millions of dollars.
Although he has successfully served as lead counsel in both jury and bench trials, Mr. Caffarelli takes particular pride in the writing and analytical abilities of his firm's litigation practice. He has successfully defeated the vast majority of his opponents' motions for summary judgment – most of them brought by large national firms. He has prevailed on many issues of first impression in federal court, such as establishing that a police chief is subject to individual liability under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and that an employees’ sleeping on the job does not alone constitute a breach of fiduciary duty in Illinois. See Rasic v. City of Northlake (N.D.Ill. No. 08C0104) and Beltran v. Brentwood North Healthcare Center, LLC, (N.D.Ill. No. 05C2558) respectively.
In recognition of his achievements, Mr. Caffarelli has been awarded an “AV” rating by LexisNexis’ Martindale-Hubbell, one of the oldest and most respected peer-review based rating services for attorneys. According to Martindale-Hubbell, the attainment of an “AV” rating is “a testament to the fact that a lawyer's peers rank him or her at the highest level of professional excellence.” As of 2008, Mr. Caffarelli was rated “superb,” a perfect 10 out of 10 on a numerical scale, by Avvo. Avvo is an online attorney rating service with an algorithm based upon an objective mathematical model.
Mr. Caffarelli is frequently invited to speak before lawyers’ groups.
Mr. Caffarelli received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with a double major of History and Spanish Literature, and was awarded a Juris Doctor from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as Note & Comment Editor of the Minnesota Law Review. During that time, he authored an article on criminal asset forfeitures, which subsequently was accepted for publication. In 1995, he served as an intern for the Honorable Judge Michael Davis of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Since graduation, Mr. Caffarelli has been admitted to practice law before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the trial bar of the Northern District of Illinois. In 2005, Mr. Caffarelli honed his trial skills by participating in the National Institute for Trial Advocacy's Midwest Regional Workshop in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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