Terry Collingsworth, managing partner of the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, joined Conrad & Scherer in 2008. A dedicated labor and human rights attorney, he specializes in litigating cases that seek to hold multinational firms accountable for human rights violations in their global operations.

Prior to joining Conrad & Scherer, Mr. Collingsworth was executive director of the International Rights Advocates (IRA), the successor organization to the litigation department of the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), where he was general counsel and executive director. In addition to his broad litigation experience, Mr. Collingsworth has developed legislative proposals to regulate labor rights in the global economy, built coalitions with groups to address human rights and labor rights issues in international forums and researched extensively the conditions for workers in developing countries.

On behalf of Burmese victims of forced labor, Mr. Collingsworth initiated a landmark case against Unocal Corporation under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), which after nearly nine years of litigation, was settled under terms that established an innovative process for compensating human rights victims living under repressive regimes. He has pending human rights cases against major multinational firms including Del Monte, ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola, Dyncorp, Wal-Mart, Bridgestone-Firestone and Chiquita Brands International.

Mr. Collingsworth has traveled extensively and worked internationally on a number of projects including labor law reform projects in Nepal and Cambodia, education programs for workers to learn their rights under new labor law systems and a program in Bangladesh to train lawyers to represent indigent workers.