Debra Millenson Esq,

The Millenson Law Firm
Millenson, Debra

Debra Millenson is the principal in The Millenson Law Firm, practicing primarily in the area of equal employment opportunity and providing advice and representation to government contractors with respect to their special non-discrimination and affirmative action obligations. Ms. Millenson has more than 35 years of experience litigating and counseling on a broad range of employment and diversity issues.Before establishing her own firm, Ms. Millenson was a senior counsel at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, representing employers in a range of diversity and affirmative action matters.

From 1982-2002, Ms. Millenson served as a senior trial attorney and counsel in the Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor, representing the Office of Federal Compliance Programs in enforcing the non-discrimination and affirmative action obligations of government contractors and the Department’s Civil Rights Center, in enforcing the nondiscrimination and affirmative action obligations of government contractors and certain federal grantees. She received many awards for her work, including the Distinguished Career Service and Federal Women’s Program Awards.

Ms. Millenson also served at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), representing the agency in appellate and trial matters, managing complex and industry-wide litigation, and speaking and writing on equal employment issues. She held the position of Acting Director of the Office of Systemic Programs, the office within EEOC that drafted, investigated and litigated on a nationwide basis complex pattern and practice actions based upon the commissioners’ charges on a nationwide basis. During her tenure, she was the recipient of a number of awards, including a special achievement award for her work with the Office of Systemic Programs.

Before joining the government, Ms. Millenson was a staff attorney and law clerk with the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee in New Orleans, handling cutting edge litigation in the areas of employment discrimination, voting rights, equal access to public accommodations and constitutional law at both the trial and appellate levels.

Ms. Millenson is an active participant in the American Bar Association’s Section of Labor and Employment Law and several of its committees, including Equal Employment Opportunity, Continuing Legal Education, Equal Opportunity in the Profession, and Marketing.  She has served as co-chair of both the Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Profession and the Continuing Legal Education Subcommittee devoted to national institutes and meetings.

Ms. Millenson has served on the faculty of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA).

In 2001, she was the initial recipient of the Justin Simon award for excellence in trial advocacy teaching, an annual award established in connection with Georgetown University’s annual NITA program. Her advocacy teaching experience includes the development of a program at EEOC in which more than 250 attorneys were trained. Presently, she serves as the leader of NITA's Advanced Trial Advocacy Program in Washington, D.C., and the Washington Regional Co-Chair of the ABA Labor Section's annual Trial Advocacy Competition.

Ms. Millenson is a contributing author to several equal employment treatises and the author of two law review articles. She is the current co-editor of the annual supplements to Lindemann & Grossman's Employment Discrimination Law, the leading treatise in the field, and has spoken at numerous programs concerning the history of Title VII.

Ms. Millenson received her B.A., cum laude, from Michigan State University and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

She is an Executive Editor of the 2014 Supplement to the Bloomberg BNA treatise Employment Discrimination Law.