About Our Founder
Bill Beardall: Founder & Executive Director Emeritus
Bill Beardall founded the Equal Justice Center in 2001 with a clear and urgent purpose: to use the justice system as a tool for empowering the workers who contribute so much to our communities and who, too often, had no meaningful access to the legal system to enforce their most basic rights. Bill believed that fair treatment in our shared society should not depend on where a worker came from, what language they spoke, or whether they could afford a lawyer.
Over the course of his career, Bill devoted more than four decades to advocating for migrant workers and low-wage workers across Texas. As the former Director of the Migrant Worker Division at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, he arrived at the EJC with deep community roots, hard-won expertise, and an unwavering conviction that the law could be a powerful instrument of justice, not just for those with resources, but for everyone.
Under Bill's leadership, the EJC became the leading law firm in Texas specializing in the rights of low-wage workers. He built the EJC's partnership with the University of Texas School of Law, directed the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic, and shaped a generation of public interest attorneys committed to the same vision.
The Equal Justice Center carries forward this mission to empower workers and provide much-needed access to the justice system to enforce their basic rights.
