Hon. Ruth Bogatyrow Kraft

Professional Experience

Ruth chairs FRB’s Labor & Employment Practice Group. She has many years of experience in advising business organizations on all aspects of employment and labor law, including wage/hour disputes, misclassification, employment policies and procedures, and compliance with federal and state laws. Her practice is comprehensive, encompassing business strategy as well as litigation before governmental bodies and in the courts. She has successfully litigated and settled multi-million dollar employment class action suits, including prevailing wage, misclassification and unpaid overtime matters in the federal and state court systems, representing employers of all sizes and in a variety of industries.

After a long career on the bench, most recently at the New York State Department of Labor, Ruth practiced in and chaired the employment law group at a multi-state law firm. She began her career as an associate at one of the distinguished law firms in the country prior to joining the faculty of New York University, where she was recognized for excellence in the teaching of law, business ethics and medicine. She has maintained a specialized interest in healthcare organizations throughout her career.

Ruth had the great privilege of studying law at the Yale Law School under the preeminent luminaries of 20th-century jurisprudence. Her doctoral thesis on informed consent is in the permanent collection of the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University and formed part of seminal research in the field of medical law.

Ruth has lectured on employment law and corporate social responsibility to business, professional and academic groups throughout the United States and abroad, including to visiting jurists from the People’s Republic of China, the Long Island Tax Professionals Symposium, the American and New York State Societies for Healthcare Risk Management, the National Conference of CPA Practitioners and the National Association of Mortgage Field Services.

Ruth is past president and a member of the executive board of the New York State Association of the Administrative Law Judiciary and President-Elect of the Judges’ and Lawyers’ Chapter of Hadassah, receiving that organization’s national leadership award. Active in the legal community, she is a board member of the Jewish Lawyers’ Association, which conferred its Hon. Paul Widlitz Award on her for distinguished service on the bench. She has been recognized as a Long Island Power Woman in Business, a Top Lawyer and a Lawyer of Distinction in addition to having received the prestigious Super Lawyer designation in employment law, awarded by her peers to only five percent of those practicing in the field.

She is a member of the employment litigation committee of the Federal Bar Council and has lectured nationally on the Americans with Disabilities Act, having authored a pioneering settlement agreement which was the first of its kind under the Affordable Care Act. She has been recognized by the Center for Law and Justice for her work in disability law as counsel to management. She is a member of the Employment Law and Alternate Dispute Resolution Committees of the Nassau Bar Association.

Continuing her commitment to lifelong learning, Ruth lectures under the aegis of the CPA Academy on employment law issues, reflective of her passion for her subject matter. A member of the advisory board of the Center for Ethics in Business at Loyola-Marymount University for many years, she has served for 20 years as an “uberjudge” of the International Business Ethics Case Competition, which has renamed its writing prize the Judge Ruth B. Kraft Award in her honor.

Throughout her career at the bench and bar, Ruth has been proud to serve the profession and her clients with compassion as well as legal acumen.