About US
MILLER O’BRIEN JENSEN, P.A.
We are trial lawyers with extensive experience in arbitration, wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, and whistleblower and retaliation cases. We have litigated hundreds of cases on behalf of individuals and labor unions, while also securing landmark results in class and collective action litigation against well-funded and powerful corporate entities.
We are equally proud of how often we avert litigation for our clients. Toward that end, we routinely provide savvy strategic advice to clients navigating complex workplace issues, including negotiations over executive severance packages, employment agreements, and non-compete and non-solicitation contracts—always with the objective of bringing about efficient and satisfactory results.
Firm History
A Love of Labor. And a Labor of Love
Miller O’Brien Jensen’s history extends back to the 1940s and the very dawn of employment and labor law in the United States. One of Minnesota’s first and longest practicing labor lawyers, Sam Sigal, started the firm’s predecessor in 1929. Sam’s work included the representation of workers threatened with loss of their civil liberties following the infamous 1934 Teamsters strike in Minneapolis. In the 1940s, Sam assisted employees and labor organizations who were asserting newly legislated collective bargaining rights. And in the 1950s, he helped protect the rights of individuals brought before Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.
Rich Miller began practicing with Sam Sigal in 1966 after his active duty in the Navy and after graduating from the University of Minnesota Law School. Rich’s roots and influence in the employee advocacy movement were wide and deep. He represented hundreds of labor organizations and employees for several decades, and he was the visionary behind some of the most significant labor-side legal and strategic initiatives in the last 20 years, including the use of Fair Value Contracting, Project Labor Agreements, and Market Recovery Programs. Prior to his retirement in 2007, Rich received the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Leonard Lindquist Distinguished Practice Award, an award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of employment and labor law. Rich and his wife Sylvia now reside in Tuscon, Arizona.
The firm’s name changed in 1985 when Bill O’Brien joined forces with Rich Miller. This also coincided with the “big bang” in employment law in the 1980s. Over the next 30 years, Bill won hundreds of settlements, verdicts, and arbitration awards. Among these was the first whistleblower verdict in Minnesota for an employee, the nation’s largest pre-suit settlement of a sex discrimination class action, and Minnesota’s largest judgment in a housing discrimination case.
More recently, in 2010, the firm joined forces with its most capable competitor, Roger Jensen. After receiving his law degree in 1967, Roger joined the Marine Corps and Judge Advocates General (JAG) Corps where he became a captain, serving as prosecutor and defense counsel in the U.S. Courts Martial. Upon his military discharge in 1971, Roger began his forty-year-plus career as a labor lawyer. He was principal and managing partner at Jensen, Bell, Converse & Erickson before aligning with Miller and O’Brien. At MOJ, Roger represented clients in all aspects of labor and employment law and was counsel to multiple Twin Cities suburban municipalities. Roger was also a recipient of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Leonard Lindquist Distinguished Practice Award in 2011. Roger retired in 2020 and continues to live in St. Paul with his wife Sarah.
Today, the attorneys at Miller O’Brien Jensen, P.A. proudly draw on this foundation of institutional knowledge to provide clients with insightful, informed, and reliable advice and counseling.