Save everyone time in the future. Way too much detail. Here is your situation: you believe you are owed back pay. You repeatedly and regularly accepted less pay than you believed you were entitled to. You mentioned nothing about objecting to this payment discrepancy while it was ongoing, so I assume you didn't.

Is that summary correct? If so here is what it sounds like to me that you are trying to talk around without just coming right out and saying what are almost certainly some important, decisive details. What else is there to this story? The employment attorney you 'retained': does this mean you have signed a client contract for this case? Have you paid them money? Many times ppl say they "retained an attorney" when they really just consulted, never retained, never paud any money, and never followed up.

Did you object to the discrepancy between paychecks and hours submitted when that happened? Or did you contonue to submit time and accept less pay without objection?