Employment lawsuits involving wage and hour disputes can get very messy, very fast. However, it is critical to determine if the data and the case will require an outside expert early on in the lawsuit. The more hands and the more opinions on how to produce the result that is desired can only lead to more confusion. Finding an expert that will know exactly how to work with your data and has a clear objective for finding the answer to your question will save attorneys and clients time, money, and frustration.
A majority of wage and hour disputes consulting firms encounter involve lost meal or rest breaks, time clock rounding, misclassification, or unpaid overtime. Each of these types of disputes are different, however they all rely on the same type of data, time punch records and payroll records. Without proper records of the employees, there can be no analysis. Depending on the company involved and the nature of the case, these records can expand into the tens of millions of observations. Experts will have the resources and statistical tools to compute large sets of data and export information that will reveal the severity or lack of severity, of the claims.
Essentially, if you find yourself diving in deep and losing yourself, as well as losing your question, in the data, call an expert.