While violations appear widespread, employees themselves rarely think to make wage and hour claims. Instead, they usually have it suggested to them by lawyers. "Ninety-five percent of our wage and hour cases are a result of someone coming to us complaining about something else," says Thomas. "I can't tell you how many people have come into our office with employment disputes that are meritless and would be thrown out of court and walk out with an FLSA claim."

So deeply rooted are archaic workplace stereotypes that many college-educated, white-collar workers are resistant to the idea that they are entitled to overtime. They associate it with a labor pool that is valued for brawn rather than brains. The notion of keeping track of their hours so they can get paid for long weeks strikes them as déclassé.

Scores of plaintiffs' firms are now aggressively pursuing overtime cases, but it is Thierman whom defense lawyers consistently cite as the most successful and innovative in the business. "He seeds the clouds," and others collect the rain, says defense attorney Wilcox. Thierman has particularly made his mark in pursuit of claims on behalf of relatively well-paid workers.

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Tall with wavy gray hair, Thierman is a bit of an iconoclast and calls himself a libertarian. He works with just a couple of assistants. A dog (Yoda) and a cat (Obi Wan) wander in occasionally for attention. At one point in the late 1980s, Thierman thought about quitting the law altogether, and, as documented by a framed certificate in his office, became a registered hypnotherapist. He owns a vacation home in Venezuela. He and his wife, who have three grown children, moved from San Francisco to Reno six years ago, and he contemplated semiretirement. Then his wage and hour practice took off.

The bulk of Thierman's cases involve claims of misclassification. In the case he settled against Starbucks in 2003, Thierman contended that merely giving employees the title of store manager or assistant manager doesn't make them "executives," who are exempt from overtime. A majority of their work, he argued, was making lattes and Frappuccinos, just like the lower-ranking, and overtime-eligible, baristas. (A Starbucks spokeswoman says it is the company's policy to comply with overtime laws.) This is the same approach he is now pressing against a wide range of other companies on behalf of employees who would widely be viewed as white-collar. His focus is on what they actually do, not on their job titles, income, or academic degrees. "You don't have to be stupid to get overtime," Thierman says. "In fact you're stupid if you don't get overtime."

Computer workers of various stripes, for example, have commonly not been paid for their extra hours. In a sop to the IT industry, lawmakers exempted such employees, who tend to be well-educated, well-paid, and have a culture of working virtually round the clock. The companies argued that they would otherwise not be able to remain competitive with foreign rivals. But under California law, the exemption applies only for workers whose primary function involves "the exercise of discretion and independent judgment." In numerous lawsuits, Thierman and other plaintiffs' attorneys have alleged that legions of systems engineers, help desk staff, and customer service personnel do no such thing. Of programmers, Thierman says, "Yes, they get to pick whatever code they want to write, but they don't tell you what the program does.... All they do is implement someone else's desires."

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Already the settlements are rolling in. Siebel Systems has agreed to pay $27.5 million to about 800 software engineers, and IBM is forking over $65 million to technical and customer support workers. Thierman says he also plans to go after other big employers of computer personnel, including banks and health insurers.

Stockbrokers are highly compensated and have long been presumed to be exempt, but Thierman caught financial services firms by alleging a technical violation of the law: To be treated as exempt, employees must receive a salary, and brokers have generally received only commissions. Although they deny liability, a parade of firms has settled after facing one of Thierman's suits, including Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and A.G. Edwards. Under a complex formula, most brokers received about $30,000 after attorneys' fees, Thierman says. An industry trade group, the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Assn., notes in a statement that the Labor Dept. issued an opinion letter in November, 2006, which stated that brokers are exempt. The letter, however, came too late to help firms that have already settled, and it isn't binding in court.

CONTINUED : Stopping the clock

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