Chris Williams

Employment and Labor Lead Attorney

Working Families Legal Clinic of The Chicago Workers' Collaborative

In late 2022, Chris became the lead attorney in the labor and employment division of the Chicago Worker Collaborative’s Working Families Legal Clinic. Chris brings over two decades of experience as a legal advocate and, prior to that, another two decades as a union and community organizer.

Chris was one of the founders and the first Director of the Working Hands Legal Clinic (now the Raise the Floor Alliance) in Chicago, a non-profit legal clinic that works with a network of community-based worker centers to support workplace justice campaigns and to bring access to legal services for low wage Illinois workers in the area of labor and employment law. While Director, Chris advised the Illinois legislature on a number of pieces of legislation designed to protect the rights of Illinois’ most vulnerable workers, from the Illinois Day and Temporary Labor Services Act to the Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act.

In 2018, Chris co-founded a national legal advocacy organization, the National Legal Advocacy Network, which has helped to build and support a national network of worker centers and legal advocacy organizations addressing workplace abuses in a variety of industries, from temp workers, restaurant workers, warehouse workers and domestic workers.

Chris has been lead counsel or co-counseled in over 400 wage and hour and employment discrimination cases, including 45 class actions. Prior to practicing law, Chris spent over a decade as a union organizer for Chicago area labor unions and was a founding member of a Chicago-based worker center.