Beverly Williams, Esq., an unusual road to the law.

Beverly Williams is a long-time member of WLIB having been a staunch participant in SWAG (Seasoned Women’s Attorney Group) and writing articles for the WLIB Newsletter. Her background and career trajectory are fascinating.

Beverly grew up in a union household, and the labor movement became part of her DNA. Her father was an AFL-CIO staffer, a union president, and a Steelworker. Her mother was a member of the Communication Workers of America. Dinner discussions often involved what had happened on the job or in labor negotiations. To her father’s chagrin, yet pride, Beverly became a management-side labor attorney. Before she was an attorney, she was negotiating successor agreements for management, and her brother was crossing the picket line as an outside vendor’s management employee. Family gatherings were tense.

Beverly graduated from Douglass College and received a Ford Foundation Scholarship for her master’s degree in public administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Beverly never planned to practice law. Her goal was to become a labor arbitrator. Throughout her career, the proverb, “Man plans, God laughs” popped into her mind as her career often changed course.

Much of her management-side labor relations experience was acquired at Newark, New Jersey School District and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, prior to becoming an attorney. As the Newark School District’s Executive Director of Labor Relations, she supervised a staff of non-lawyers and represented the Newark School District in grievance and arbitration hearings, and collective bargaining negotiations. She was encouraged to go to law school by the arbitrators who she appeared before on behalf of the Newark School District.

As an adjunct faculty member, Beverly taught a Labor Relations course to evening graduate students at Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration and seminars at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.

While attending Rutgers Law School-Newark in the evening, she continued to work full time at the Newark School District, then in a lesser role in the Labor Relations Department of the Port Authority, and finally as a full-time law clerk at Cohn & Lifland in Saddle Brook.

While in law school she was a General Editor of the Rutgers Law Review. She authored an article entitled Pattern Makers’ League v. NLRB: Individual Autonomy v. Union Solidarity? 39 RUTGERS L. REV. 197 (1986). Faculty and staff encouragement prompted her to apply for clerkships.

After graduating from law school, she clerked for the Honorable Robert N. Wilentz, Chief Justice (dec.), Supreme Court of New Jersey, the year the Baby M case was heard.

After her clerkship, Beverly became an associate at Epstein Becker & Green, P. C. As an EB&G associate, she negotiated labor agreements and provided advice and counsel regarding labor matters to the firm’s clients. An associate whose office was next to Beverly’s, suggested that she apply for an open position where her father was a C-Suite executive.

As Vice President for Corporate Employment Law Services at Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Beverly was responsible for ensuring that ADP remained union free. Beverly retired early from ADP, and joined the Herbert Law Group, LLC, in Englewood, as Of Counsel. She counseled attorneys in that position, including a former General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Beverly is now a Partner in Wong Fleming, a global law firm headquartered in Princeton, NJ, and author of Your GPS to Employment Success: How to Find and Succeed in the Right Job and Get the Job—Done! Her practice specializes in Labor, ADR, and Employment Law. She also writes labor and employment articles for legal publications.

She is the host of, Your Employment Matters, a podcast series featuring award-winning business industry experts, labor leaders, success and inspirational stories, and actionable strategies for career advancement.