Deborah R. Willig, the straight-talking lawyer who recently led high-profile negotiations on behalf of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs playing hoops and talking union at the dinner table.

Her father owned a local deli. Her mother worked for the state of Pennsylvania and was a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Her grandfather was a union tailor and became his local union president.

A managing partner of Willig, Williams & Davidson, which she co-founded, Willig, 76, has for decades leveraged her working-class roots and negotiation skills as a union-side advocate in Philadelphia.

Recently, she negotiated a collective bargaining agreement for players with the Women's National Basketball Association. In 2025, the league’s minimum salary was $66,079, ESPN reported. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, minimum salaries will range from $270,000 to $300,000 in 2026, according to a March 20 press release from the WNBA. 

Willig says she’s driven in her work because she’s “on the side of the angels.”

When you represent unions, Willig says, “you’re basically fighting for the little person against the giant corporation or giant government. It’s frequently a David and Goliath battle.”

Willig, along with other members of her law firm, also helped the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association reach their first collective bargaining agreement in 2022, which increased salaries, established free agency and instituted parental and mental health leave.

More recently, working as outside counsel for the WNBPA, Willig helped players reach a historic collective bargaining agreement in March 2026 that runs through 2032. The agreement increases salaries; allows for revenue sharing; expands benefits, including healthcare; and improves working and housing conditions. The agreement, reached after 17 months of negotiations, averted a potential strike by the players.

Meghann Burke, the executive director of the NWSLPA, says players call Willig “Bad-Ass Deb” or “B.A.D.” because Willig “suffers no fools, particularly a management side who underestimates her clients or their worth.”

“In women's sports, this is key to empowering women to stand in their power,” Burke says. “Deb isn't only exercising a strategic legal mind; she is being her authentic self and, in so doing, inspiring the next generations of professional women to know their worth.” 

Willig says one of the most important aspects of negotiating is the ability to listen to “both your client and other side” to understand whether demands are reasonable and make sense, as well as to help “plot the way” to a middle ground. 

She emphasizes that in each negotiation, a lawyer must study and understand the issues and what they mean to the parties involved.

“You have to understand the budget,” she says. “You really have to get into the weeds and understand the workings of the employer and the goals of the union.”

Willig adds that there are certain lessons that employers never seem to learn.

Sometimes, Willig says, “I just sit there and think to myself, ‘It is such a repetitive theme that if managers listened to workers, business and governments might actually run better, but they won’t do it.’”

Willig adds, “I have been confounded by that for 50 years.” 

As for her negotiation style, she’s heard that she’s perceived as tough, but she emphasizes the importance of civility, integrity and trust. Willig says she’s heard that she’s considered intimidating, but she doesn’t think that she is.

Willig points out that she can cry at a “pin drop,” for example, when actress Cynthia Erivo, as fictional character Elphaba, sings “I’m Not That Girl” in the 2024 movie Wicked.

“People who don’t know me well might find that hard to imagine,” she says.

Willig graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and then went to the Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she became the first female president of the Temple University Student Bar Association. After graduating from law school in 1975, she worked for one year as a law clerk for Judge Lisa Richette of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.

After that, she started representing labor unions and has never looked back.

“I grew up in the Civil Rights Movement and the belief system that says everybody deserves equal treatment and equal access under the law,” Willig says.

Over the decades, her union clients have included schoolteachers, cafeteria workers, firefighters, musicians and teamsters. She notably helped secured healthcare benefits for the domestic partners of employees of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a landmark agreement in the early 1990s.

In 1992, Willig became the first female chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. In 2023, Willig received the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award for her professional excellence and paving the way for other women in the legal profession.

Willig is also an avid sports fan, particularly when it comes to her beloved Philadelphia Phillies and Philadelphia Eagles.

“They never fail to disappoint,” she quips.

Willig, who played basketball at the Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, as well for two years at the University of Pennsylvania, says negotiating on behalf of female sports stars was “very exciting.” She’s proud of all the work that she’s done over the decades but admits that negotiating on behalf of female athletes in recent years has been particularly rewarding.

“I am delighted that my personal interests and professional life came together finally,” Willig says. “My only regret is the time of my life that it came together.”