Brooklyn Defender Services' boss accused of union-busting scheme
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An attorney union accused Brooklyn Defender Services’ Executive Director Lisa Schreibersdorf of attempting to dismantle the chapter of Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys that operates in her organization. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Jacob Kaye
The boss of a top New York City public defense group tried to break up her organization's own attorney union by urging a lawyer to launch a competing one, union leaders alleged on Friday.
Lisa Schreibersdorf, the executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, allegedly approached one of her organization’s attorneys this month and pitched them on the idea of decertifying the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys chapter that has operated at BDS since 2021.
Schreibersdorf allegedly offered up a suite of benefits to the lawyer should they act on her plan. The executive director told the attorney she would cut their caseload in half while keeping their pay the same, install them as union president and cover the cost of forming a new union, ALAA claims.
Schreibersdorf’s attempt to bust the ALAA chapter appeared to violate the National Labor Relations Act, which says that employers can’t “interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of…the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations,” according to the union.
The union filed an unfair labor practices complaint against BDS and their executive director on Friday with the National Labor Relations Board.
“[Schreibersdorf] has decided that she is going to covertly and unlawfully undo the free choice of her staff because she disagrees with it,” Brian Holbrook, the vice president of communications for the union, told the Eagle. “She wants to have as much control as possible over everything that happens in the organization.”
The union said that Schreibersdorf invited the union member to a one-on-one meeting on Sept. 16. The executive director then laid out the plan to decertify the ALAA-UAW Local 2325 chapter at BDS, which was detailed on a printed piece of paper with step-by-step instructions, the union alleged.
While offering personal benefits to the attorney, Schreibersdorf also allegedly promised to partially finance the new union. She gave the member contact information to a law firm that would offer advice because a BDS board member had a friend who worked as an attorney at the firm, the union said. Schreibersdorf also allegedly said she could find a benefactor to pay for the legal fees and that she would pay for training for the new union.
Shortly after the meeting, the attorney told the BDS union chair about the conversation, despite Schreibersdorf allegedly telling them not to.
In a statement to the Eagle, a BDS spokesperson denied that the organization had ever “repudiated any of its obligations under the existing [labor] contract, including the grievance procedure or any obligation to bargain with the union and it does not intend to do so now.”
“BDS is committed to following all its obligations to its existing union, the ALAA,” the spokesperson said. “If the employees decide to change the current union structure lawfully, as is their right and some have indicated they desire, BDS would follow the law and honor those wishes as well.”
“BDS recognizes these internal union matters are for the employees to decide, not BDS and not the ALAA,” they added.
Brooklyn Defender Services’ Executive Director Lisa Schreibersdorf was accused of attempting to break up her organization's chapter of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, which has been operating as a union at BDS since 2021. Photo via BDS
Tensions between the union and Schreibersdorf had been running high in the lead up to the alleged decertification plot.
Earlier this year, the organization inherited a city contract for criminal public defense work from Queens Defenders, whose former executive director was arrested on fraud charges in June. As part of the deal, BDS hired most of the attorneys and staff doing criminal defense work at the Queens organization and opened a BDS office in the World’s Borough.
But union officials said the expansion led to a two-tiered system, where attorneys in Queens were subject to different employment policies than those in Brooklyn, despite the fact that unionized attorneys in both offices operated under the same collective bargaining agreement.
Then over the summer, Schreibersdorf made changes to the organization’s work-from-home policy, requiring attorneys and staff to work in the office four to five days per week. She also said that employees would be required to clock in and out of work through an app that would share employees’ location with their employer.
The union claimed both changes were made by Schreibersdorf without first consulting ALAA members.
The union filed grievances against BDS with the NLRB in August over the changes.
ALAA claims that Schreibersdorf’s decertification attempt has been a long time coming.
“Since taking over the Queens Defenders contract earlier this year, Lisa Schreibersdorf has
appeared intent on reducing efficiency and driving off talent from the two offices through the
deliberate implementation of onerous working conditions,” Andrew Eichen, the BDS union co-chair and senior attorney in the organization’s civil practice, said in a statement. “When pressed for justification for these changes, she openly professed a distrust of her own staff. Now, we find that Schreibersdorf is willing to commit blatant and obvious labor law violations to stifle discontent.”
“Her actions betray a contempt for the organization’s employees, their concerns, and most of all, their democratically elected representative: the Brooklyn Defender Services Union,” Eichen added. “Legal services workers deserve better, and moreover, indigent New Yorkers deserve better.”
Schreibersdorf founded BDS in 1996 in response to labor troubles at the Legal Aid Society.
When LAS lawyers went on strike that year, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani cut a city contract with the public defender firm and offered the city funds up to any new organization that could represent low-income New Yorkers using non-unionized attorneys.
That’s when BDS and several other firms, like Queens Defenders, were born.
Around 20 years after BDS’ creation, attorneys there began to unionize. Similar organized labor movements began to emerge in other New York City public defender organizations, including at Queens Defenders.
When fraud allegations against Queens Defenders’ former executive leader, Lori Zeno, began to emerge earlier this year, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice moved to terminate a contract the Queens organization held with the city and move it over to BDS along with around 100 attorneys, social workers and support staffers.
Zeno and her husband, who also worked for Queens Defenders, were later accused by federal prosecutors of siphoning off at least $300,000 from the organization, which was mostly funded by taxpayer dollars.
Zeno’s arrest wasn’t a surprise for some Queens Defenders attorneys, who long claimed the former boss ran the organization like her personal fiefdom.
One attorney who recently made the switch from Queens Defenders to BDS and requested anonymity because of fear of reprisal said Schreibersdorf’s leadership is reminiscent of their former employer.
"Lisa is Zeno 2.0, the other side of a bad coin,” the attorney said. “MOCJ should really consider doing something about this before they have another scandal on their hands."
