From its inception, the National Employment Law Council has been focused on creating opportunity for people of color representing management in the field of labor and employment law.
NELC’s roots were planted in 1995, when Randall Robertson, then in-house counsel for MCI (a predecessor to Verizon Wireless) met three of his trusted outside labor and employment attorneys for lunch in Chicago during an annual meeting of the National Bar Association. These three highly accomplished lawyers were at minority-owned law firms serving institutional clients. Martin Wickliff, of Wickliff & Hall (now a partner with Cozen O’Connor in Houston), Grady Murdock of Earl L. Neal & Associates (now a retired partner with Littler Mendelson in Chicago), and Darrell S. Gay of Gay, Maher & Brown (now a partner with ArentFox Schiff in New York).
Randall and Darrell had recently attended a meeting of the American Employment Law Council (AELC), which was an “invitation only” organization aimed at tenured management-side labor and employment law practitioners, but had minimal minority representation, particularly in speaking roles.
At the 1995 lunch, Randall, Darrell, Marty, and Grady agreed upon the need for a similar national organization aimed at tenured minority management-side labor and employment lawyers. They then reached out to a select group of other well respected Black labor and employment attorneys including Naomi Young, a partner in another minority owned and operated law firm Gartner & Young (now a retired partner with Ballard Spahr in Los Angeles), Brent Wilson of Elarbee, Thompson Sapp & Wilson LLP, and Joe Hill, a senior in-house attorney with McDonald’s, Gary Lafayette, now with Sanders Roberts in San Francisco, and Beverly Stuart, at that time a senior attorney with Kaiser Permanente. This body then effectively became the “Coordinating Committee” of the National Employment Law Council (the “NELC”).
Joe Hill’s participation is noteworthy because he established a pattern of support from McDonald’s and its labor/employment team that has continued to date. Joe, like Randall Robertson, was one of the early in-house counsel to aggressively open doors for minority outside labor and employment counsel to obtain corporate work.
NELC held its initial conference at the Oak Brook Country Club then owned by the Dial Corp in Oak Brook, Illinois. A core tenet from the outset was that the NELC conference would insist upon advanced-level presentations and papers tailored toward experienced practitioners. The organizers agreed that only experienced attorneys whose practices were fully dedicated to labor/employment issues would be invited. More than 90 seasoned labor and employment attorneys attended that first conference.
For years, the Coordinating Committee held regular Saturday morning conference calls, beginning shortly after Labor Day and leading up to an annual late April conference.
While NELC has always been a collective effort, Darrell Gay provided much of the initial leadership and vision for NELC and led the organization through its first 15 years. While the founders of NELC were all Black, from the outset the founders committed that the organization should be composed of Black, Hispanic and Asian management-side labor/employment attorneys and/or Senior Human Resources Executives, and they strove to attract diverse speakers and conference attendees. Joe Centeno, now a partner with Buchanon Ingersoll in Philadelphia, was the first Asian-American member of the Coordinating Committee, joining in 2005. Richard Amador was recruited as the first Latino member of the Coordinating Committee in 2006. In 2009, the Coordinating Committee was reconstituted as a Board of Directors when NELC formally incorporated and organized as a non-profit trade association. The organization now promotes opportunity for all attorneys and senior HR and DEI leaders of color in our field.
Our next President, Barbara Johnson (with Barbara Johnson PLC in Washington, D.C.) served from 2011 to 2019. She was followed by Stacey Campbell (with Campbell Litigation in Denver) from 2019 to 2024. Richard Amador (with Sanchez & Amador in Los Angeles) was elected President in May 2024.
Our Annual Conferences became increasingly larger, and achieved a reputation as the “go to” CLE event for many of our members, both at law firms and in-house. Each year since—except during the Pandemic when virtual conferences were held—the Annual Conference has rotated to different cities, including Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Denver, and others.
Conference speakers regularly include experts in the field, who for the most part were all members or potential members of the NELC, including general counsels, deputy general counsels, and global heads of employment law. Speakers have also included judges, leading arbitrators and mediators, and officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and U.S. Department of Labor. Long-time member Dennis Duffy (now a partner at Kane Russell Coleman Logan in Houston), has for many years presented on ethics at the conference and his annually updated and comprehensive paper is the must-have resource for any ethics issue confronting many of our members.
Each year, around 30-40% of Annual Conference attendees are in-house counsel; this participation is critical to the success of the conference as all attendees discuss issues and innovative solutions in our field and it is very important to have both the in-house and outside counsel perspective. To facilitate participation for in-house members with budget constraints, several years ago, NELC launched the Rafael Medina scholarship fund to provide financial assistance for such members.
While not among NELC’s founders, Rafael Medina of McDonald’s joined the Board of NELC, and following in the footsteps of Randall Robertson and Joe Hill, opened doors and mentored countless NELC members. The support of in-house counsel such as Randall, Joe, and Rafael is key to the success of the practice area for minority outside labor and employment counsel, and we are indebted to each of them for their dedicated involvement with the NELC and support of our members.
Over the years, NELC built upon the foundation of our Annual Conference to add numerous other components. To provide members, especially new ones, with opportunities to meet one another, NELC instituted a dine-around program whereby members sign up for pre-selected restaurants for dinner at the conference.
Having earned its reputation for providing advancement opportunities for experienced practitioners, NELC next developed a program for junior labor and employment defense lawyers not yet eligible for membership. Spearheaded by Donna Hughes (now a leadership coach in New York), Rob Jones (now with Spirit Airlines), Eric Barnum (now a partner at Baker Hostetler in Atlanta), and Richard Amador (founding partner of Sanchez & Amador in Los Angeles), in 2011 NELC launched a pipeline program of junior management side labor and employment lawyers. With the success and expansion of the program, it was renamed the NELC Academy.
Each year, up to 30 Fellows are competitively selected from firms nationwide for advanced-skills training, mentoring by NELC members, and integration into the NELC network. Academy alumni now include multiple General Counsel, Deputy General Counsel, Global Heads of Employment, law firm practice group leaders, major rainmakers, and successful trial lawyers. The Academy draws from the wealth of knowledge, skill and experience in the NELC membership and is co-chaired by three alumni of the program.
Based on the success of the Academy, in 2019 NELC launched the In-house Career Accelerator Program (ICAP) for lawyers recently transitioned in-house. ICAP also taps into the wealth of knowledge in our membership, providing career success skills and empowering new in-house employment counsel with access to NELC’s national network of experts in our field. Both ICAP and the Academy are held in conjunction with the Annual Conference.
NELC also instituted an in-house-only online discussion group, providing referrals, benchmarking, and up-to-the minute insight on legal developments affecting employers. The in-house committee also holds regular calls to discuss trending issues and meets each year at the annual conference.
NELC next launched half-day Regional Conferences to focus on the future of the practice, usually hosted at a corporate campus, such as McDonald’s in Chicago, UPS in Atlanta, Toyota in Dallas, and Google, Facebook, and Gilead in the Silicon Valley. These Regional Conferences also provide a greater opportunity for members to connect beyond the Annual Conferences.
The American Bar Association and NELC have partnered on a Trial Academy every other year since 2017, with a hiatus during the Pandemic. The faculty includes leading NELC trial lawyers, plaintiff’s trial lawyers, and judges. Several NELC members have participated in this intensive three-day skills building program, culminating in mock trials against the members of the plaintiffs’ bar.
NELC also hosts periodic webinars on a wide array of topics, enabling members to hone their skills and deepen their knowledge.
Today, NELC’s membership is comprised of the leading labor and employment defense attorneys in the United States (supplemented by some international practitioners) drawn from majority and minority-owned law firms, corporate law departments, as well as senior Human Resources and a growing number of in-house Diversity, Equity and Inclusion leaders. Additional membership programs and benefits are being developed as the NELC continues to evolve and grow as part of the NELC’s organic evolution.
We have come a long way since 1995. NELC is well positioned to continue its successful efforts to increase the ethnic and racial diversity of our field through innovative community and relationship-building, meaningful professional advancement, and dynamic mentoring.
