Paul T. Ryder

Paul T. Ryder, Jr., is a partner in the Coral Gables office of Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, P.L. Mr. Ryder has been exclusively representing management of several municipal government entities in the South Florida area since 1993.

Mr. Ryder’s labor experience includes client counseling in a wide range of labor relations issues; negotiating, drafting, and interpreting collective bargaining agreements; handling grievance/arbitration hearings; litigating proceedings under the Public Employee Relations Act and the National Labor Relations Act; and handling unemployment hearings.

Mr. Ryder’s employment experience includes client counseling for compliance with federal, state and local laws regarding employment discrimination and employee rights and benefits under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the American with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Mr. Ryder’s expertise extends as well to drafting and reviewing employment policies, employee handbooks, and employment contracts and representing clients before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Florida Commission on Human Relations.

Mr. Ryder’s federal and state court litigation experience includes cases involving employment discrimination and wage claims brought under a broad range of federal and state statutes, as well as civil rights actions under state and federal law (including those where qualified immunity is implicated).

Mr. Ryder has been practicing at the Law Offices of Paul T. Ryder, Jr., P.A. since 2006 and before that was with a national law firm’s labor and employment law group in Miami for two years after working with the labor and employment law specialty law firm of Muller Mintz from 1993 through 2004, at which time the two firms merged.

Mr. Ryder is Board Certified by the Florida Bar in Labor and Employment Law, and by the Florida Supreme Court as a Circuit and County Court Mediator.  He is admitted to practice in the Southern District of Florida and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Mr. Ryder earned his law degree from the University of Miami Law School of Law where he also served as a member and an Articles and Comments Editor of the University of Miami Law Review, and was co-author of: Comment, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4): Discovery of Expert Information, 42 U. Miami L. Rev. 1101 (1988).

Before attending law school at the University of Miami, Mr. Ryder was employed as a Police Officer and Police Sergeant with the Watertown Police Department in Watertown, Massachusetts, and he also held elected positions as a Bargaining Agent and Vice President of the Watertown Police Patrolman’s Association.