Super Lawyers - Minnesota 2015

The
Whistleblower ’s
Best Friend
BY DAN HEILMAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD FLEISCHMAN
Clayton D. Halunen aims to afflict the
comfortable and comfort the afflicted

CLAYTON D. HALUNEN GREW UP IN Virginia, Minnesota, the son of working parents: His father was an electrician for a railroad, and his mother taught and worked for St. Louis County.

Both dealt with workplace issues: Halunen’s father faced pressure to quit after a 42-year career, while his mother was repeatedly passed over for promotions that went to less-qualified male colleagues. Those experiences made an impression on Halunen, who eventually set aside his ambitions to be an architect to follow his brother-in-law into the law. Once he graduated, his dad’s case was the first one he took, and he later represented his mom as well.

The experience taught him to
think twice about representing family
members—“It’s too emotional,” he
says—but Halunen was also struck by the
gratifying feeling of helping plaintiffs in
employment issues. Following a stint in-
house at a U.S. Steel facility near where
he grew up, he formed his own one-horse
employment firm in 1998. (A Chicago
office, run by Halunen’s brother-in-law,
opened in 2006.)

Now Halunen Law, which plans to ramp up to 15 attorneys by the end of the year, gains recoveries for its clients in approximately 95 percent of its cases, racking up more than $2 billion in total recoveries.

“I realized very quickly that I wasn’t
meant to work on the management side,”
he says. “In mining, it’s labor against
management. It’s like they’re enemies.
My sympathies were much more with
labor and trying to improve their working
conditions rather than trying to help
“Clayton is tenacious but not
overbearing,” says one of Halunen’s most
famous clients, former Minnesota Vikings
punter Chris Kluwe. “He has a good idea
of how he wants to achieve his goals, yet
he welcomes input from his clients.”
The Kluwe case was signature Halunen
work. Kluwe threatened to sue the Vikings
in 2014, claiming discrimination on
the grounds of human rights, religion,
defamation and “tortious interference for
contractual relations.” In short: Kluwe
maintained that the team had cut him in
part because of his activism on behalf of
same-sex rights.

Working alongside attorney Susan M. Coler and law clerk Nathaniel Smith, Halunen brokered a settlement stipulating that the team would donate to five charities benefitting LGBT and anti-hate groups, and sponsor a national symposium on LGBT issues. Kluwe took no money from the settlement.

From an employment law perspective, the Kluwe matter might have seemed to some like a standard case of a hostile work environment. The venue, of course— not to mention Kluwe’s spicy Jan. 2, 2014 article about the situation on Deadspin. com—garnered headlines.