Sarah J. Arendt
PARTNER
Tel: 312-419-1008
Toll Free: 877-419-1008
Fax: 312-419-1025
Email: sarendt@flsalaw.com
Sarah Arendt has represented thousands of employees in class, collective, and individual actions to recover unpaid minimum wages, overtime compensation, and other owed wages and penalties. A federal court has called Sarah a “highly respected and experienced lawyer” in wage and hour law.
Sarah takes on wage theft in all its forms – she has represented federal employees seeking owed overtime and night pay from the U.S. Government, inside sales representatives who were misclassified as managers by their tech firm and big-box employers, and tipped workers who were not paid the minimum wage by restaurant franchises across the country. Sarah has also recovered unpaid wages and overtime compensation for home health and companion care workers, including those who work 24-hour shifts in the homes of their employer’s clients.
Sarah doesn’t just fight wage theft. She has also recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars for employees who have been discriminated against on the basis of their age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, and military service. She has represented clients before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
Sarah is also an ardent advocate for workers outside the office. She is a regular contributor to a leading treatise, “The Fair Labor Standards Act,” and has spoken on state and local vacation pay legislation at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Sarah was the recipient of LAF Chicago’s 2015 Volunteer of the Year Award for their Violence Against Women Act and U Visa Pro Bono Project. She is a former Peggy Browning fellow and the current Co-Coordinator of the Peggy Browning Alumni Association – Chicago Chapter, which encourages law students and young attorneys to pursue careers in union-side labor law. Sarah is also a member of the Women Employed Quality Jobs Council, where she helped author an amendment to the Illinois Equal Pay Act preventing employers from inquiring about a job applicant’s salary history.
Sarah received her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. During law school Sarah worked to overturn the convictions of wrongly-accused prisoners through The Exoneration Project clinic. She also worked as a research assistant to Professor Tom Ginsburg and Dean Thomas J. Miles.