Mary Joyce Carlson ESQ.

An award-winning attorney specializing in domestic and international Public & Employment Law, Mary Joyce Carlson has won landmark cases representing high-profile public and private sector clients throughout the U.S., Europe, U.K., Africa, and Latin America. With additional areas of practice in Civil Rights, International Business Practices, Voting Rights, Racial & Gender Discrimination, Human Rights, and Securities Fraud, Ms. Carlson recently coordinated successful litigation regarding practices of a major multinational employers. 

Ms. Carlson’s career includes an early focus on non-compliance with U.S. labor relations & employment law, including matters involving sexual harassment & gender-based violations of law, as well as a thriving practice centered on international business and public sector law. Her more recent international projects have included designing shareholder due diligence training and programs for South African pension funds, coordinating international supply chain investigations and workforce interventions, providing “good faith” collective bargaining training for the Taiwanese Labor Ministry, designing and delivering human rights and labor training for international judiciary to disrupt human trafficking from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and partnering with a leading Brazilian law firm to investigate and litigate workplace gender-racial violence and harassment.

Mary Joyce is recognized for her representation of clients under OECD guidelines and coordination of investor prosecution of cases under European Competition Law. In that capacity, Ms. Carlson supervised the workload of lawyers litigating French, Italian & German antitrust complaints coming before the European Commission. Her international work has included collaboration with the European Public Service Union and the European Federation of Food, Agriculture & Tourism Trade Unions. She has also represented clients before the Brazilian Labor Prosecution Service (Ministério Público do Trabalho), and holds an International Global Legal (IGL) designation.

Ms. Carlson’s career has featured critical wins in Labor & Employment Law, and she has gained an international reputation for creating new lines of inquiry and innovative legal theories that result in successful litigation, particularly in regards to coordinating complex EU anti-competition matters. Ms. Carlson has built an impressive portfolio of clients and professional contacts that include large nonprofit organizations, NGOs, academic institutions, advocacy groups, professional associations, and national labor unions, including SEIU, CWA, and UAW. In addition, Mary Joyce provides due diligence and client consultation on responsible investments and union-side investment funds, including shareholder litigation.

As counsel for The Fight for Fifteen, Mary Joyce Carlson played a key role in elevating more than 22 million workers to win $62 million in raises, a successful legal battle that MSNBC’s Chris Hayes stated, “…has completely changed the politics of the country.”

Mary Joyce served as Distinguished Scholar & Speaker at Cornell University, conducted faculty-student lectures, spoke at many ABA International Law meetings, and has been quoted in Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and more. Throughout her career, Ms. Carlson has served on select panels, including the ABA “Future of Worklife, Post Pandemic” panel. She recently served as guest commentator at the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law’s 36^th Annual Kenneth M. Piper Lecture, featuring Jared Bernstein, former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden. For the Harvard Law School Clean Slate Project Working Group, she played an active role in drafting solution sets and proposals for a variety of constituencies and communities.

A native of rural Tennessee, Mary Joyce participated in student Civil Rights protests while earning her undergraduate degree. She later earned a Juris Doctor degree from Duke University School of Law, where she prepared for her career in Civil Rights and Economic Justice. After practicing law in Georgia and Maryland, Ms. Carlson continued her career in Washington, DC, where she successfully challenged the longstanding discriminatory gender and racial composition of juries, helped lift a cap on the wages of nurses, brought winning antitrust lawsuits against hospital networks for colluding to depress nursing salaries, and played a critical role in reforming racially biased policies on nursing assignments to hospital specialty units. Mary Joyce was subsequently appointed by President Clinton to the position of Deputy General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board.

Ms. Carlson recently won the prestigious Sidney Hillman Foundation George “Citizen” Barrett Award for Public Interest Law. She is a lifelong believer in positive change to foster meaningful progress in Civil Rights, Economic Justice, and Gender Equality. Mary Joyce’s compassionate engagement style, visionary legal acumen, strong international business expertise, and proven capacity to advance her clients’ interests, have all combined to position her as a trusted advocate for her growing client portfolio.