Our History
A Conversation with Our Predecessors
Q Law NJ, Inc. ("Q Law") itself was founded in 2025, ​but its formation comes after the culmination of decades of organizing among LGBTQ+ attorneys in New Jersey. That story can start, at the very least, with similar efforts undertaken by William "Bill" Singer, Esq. in the 1980s. At that time, Singer was witnessing the beginning of the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic. The partners of the law firm that he founded and at which he was a managing partner fired him after discovering he was gay. He was left with no choice but to open his own practice. However, on the heels of this discrimination, he was now free to practice law in service of the gay and lesbian community. Since at least the 1980s, LGBTQ+ organizing by legal practitioners has surged, receded, and responded to victories and threats faced by LGBTQ+ people. Today, our community faces no different a task.
​
This page memorializes the culmination of our recorded oral history, a project in and of itself. As a community, we practice in diverse areas of the law. Some of us always knew that we wanted to be lawyers; others did not. Some of us knew that we were LGBTQ+ from an early age; others did not. Some of us view ourselves as LGBTQ+ lawyers; others as lawyers who are LGBTQ+; others as LGBTQ+ people who happen to be lawyers; and others as allies to the LGBTQ+ community. We are a diverse collective of people with a common goal: to struggle toward a world where all can live freely and authentically as ourselves, irrespective of our identities, be they marginalized, disenfranchised, or otherwise. This common thread is what brings us to this work.
A Note on Language & Histories
Histories are often told by those who are privileged enough to have lived to tell them and by those who have the power to tell them. This history does not purport to be an exhaustive history of LGBTQ+ legal organizing in New Jersey, not to mention LGBTQ+ organizing writ large. Q Law welcomes any additions and suggestions to supplement this ever-evolving record of history. We thank you all for the part you have, do, and will play in the writing of this story.
Additionally, the focus of legal organizing, and by extension, the language that has been used by the legal community, has evolved over time. Much of the focus of organizing in the late 20th Century and early 2000s was focused on the rights of gay and lesbian people, to the exclusion of the frequently overlooked challenges faced by other members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender people and people who have other intersectional and marginalized identities. We recognize that language has tremendous power in framing the narrative; the uses of "gay and lesbian" versus "LGBTQ+" below are intentional and are meant to reflect the historical arc of the conversation. Q Law wants to acknowledge the absence of our fellow trans and queer people of color in the stories told about these time periods and invites any additions that may fill those gaps.
1980s
Seeing the formation of what started as an informal gathering of gay and lesbian lawyers in New York City by Arthur “Art” Leonard, Esq. (which has since grow into the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York), Bill Singer endeavored to create a parallel organization in New Jersey that might alleviate some of the loneliness he was experiencing in the practice of law. With Leonard’s guidance, Singer hosted an introductory event for gay and lesbian lawyers in New Jersey. But as the ravages of the AIDS epidemic tore through the community, all of the gay men around Singer died, and many women left the profession, finding that they could not sustain a living as out legal practitioners. Efforts around this initial formation dwindled as the community lost members in droves. Mere survival became paramount.
​
In the mid-1980s, Singer assisted Margaret Nichols with forming the Hyacinth Foundation, New Jersey's first HIV service provider whose mission was to help people dying of HIV/AIDS do so with dignity and support, and led its Legal Committee. The Committee's work was almost exclusively volunteer-driven, sustained by New Jersey LGBTQ lawyers' willingness to give what time they could to support the needs of their community.
1990s
In the 1990s, a new group of organizers attempted to create a more socially-oriented affinity bar that lasted for a few years, but ran out of steam without strong institutional support. The AIDS epidemic continued to persist and ravage the gay community such that a resilient organizing effort became impractical to sustain. At the same time, in 1992, the New Jersey Legislature amended the Law Against Discrimination to include protections against discrimination on the basis of "affectional or sexual orientation" (gender identity was added as a protected characteristic in 2006). In 1997, the New Jersey Supreme Court appointed a first-of-its-kind task force to study discrimination against gay and lesbian lawyers or litigants and perceptions around gay and lesbian discrimination within the courts. The Task Force on Gay & Lesbian Issues was a 25-member committee that was co-chaired by the Hon. G. Thomas Bowen and Elizabeth Zuckerman, Esq. The Final Report identified that which many of us, unfortunately, know to be true: while those who do not identify as gay or lesbian did not believe discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was a problem within the courts, respondents who identified as gay or lesbian overwhelmingly and across all measured metrics felt that sexual orientation discrimination affected the judicial system. 61% of gay and lesbian respondents believed sexual orientation bias affected the outcome of a case, including significantly higher parental termination outcomes and increased likelihood of criminal charges being sought by prosecutors.
2000s
In 2003, the Honorable Daniel Weiss, Retired, and Laraine Schwartz, Esq., pushed for the creation of a committee within the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) dedicated to advancing lesbian and gay rights, with critical support from later President of the NJSBA, Thomas H. Prol. For long, some gay and lesbian lawyers, a significant number of whom practiced family law in service of the community, found that the Family Law Section of the NJSBA was far more focused on dissolution work, rather than formation and adoption work, which was of particular interest to gay and lesbian clients. The same disconnect was true of other areas of practice. The Committee, which would eventually become the LGBTQ Rights Section, quickly leveraged this affiliation with the Bar Association, availing itself of the facilities, staffing, and resources of the Bar Association to fill what was an evident void for the needs of the community. The Committee was vibrant from the very beginning and provided a professional refuge to practitioners, regardless of whether they were "out" in their workplaces, to look for mentorship, guidance, support, and camaraderie in the face of both professional and personal challenges. And, equally important, there was, for the first time, a formalized voice of the community within NJSBA that advocated and pushed the organization to do better by LGBTQ+ practitioners and clients.
​
Also in 2003, the National Center for LGBT Rights received a grant from the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund to convene a meeting of people practicing LGBT family law. In 2009, this initially small meeting was formalized as the LGBTQ Family Law Institute, which flourishes to this day. Under Bill Singer's leadership, the Institute expanded to holding regional meetings around the country, enabling local skills and resource exchanges and now has international reach.
2010s
The LGBTQ Rights Section of NJSBA continued to thrive in its various forms for more than twenty years. But that does not mean it and its members have not faced challenges during that time. Similar to many organizations during this decade, the broader NJSBA membership experienced schisms over LGBT issues, such as marriage equality, and LGBTQ+ lawyers found themselves facing prejudice from others within the legal community when outside of the confines of the LGBTQ Rights Section. Some LGBTQ+ practitioners still experienced what some described as the "ick factor," i.e. non-LGBTQ lawyers acting on the "politics of disgust" that animated much of the discourse around the AIDS epidemic not long ago. Even as improvements came to the LGBTQ+ community by way of the courts, the shadows of prejudice continued to linger.
Here & Now
2025
Horrified by the immediate and disastrous erosion of rights for transgender and gender diverse people upon the second inauguration of the Trump administration, a small group of leaders within the NJSBA LGBTQ Rights Section sought to respond on behalf of the community. Sadly, considerations other than the rights of the LGBTQ+ community limited action by the New Jersey legal community. Deciding the moment was right again, Q Law formed to create an independent political force that can speak out and act without limitations other than its own. Working in community with the NJSBA LGBTQ Rights Section, Q Law formed to augment the critical work of the Section by being an independent voice for LGBTQ+ people and leveraging our collective power through bold and unfettered advocacy.
​A special thank you to this project's lead, Liz Pudel, Esq., who compiled much of this oral history on LGBTQ+ organizing in the New Jersey legal profession. Q Law also extends it gratitude and thanks to all the incredible members of our community who helped provide background and interviews on these histories: Bill Singer, Esq.; Robyn Gigl, Esq.; Leslie Farber, Esq.; Deb Guston, Esq.; Honorable Daniel Weiss, Retired; and Elizabeth Zuckerman, Esq. Though this history was synthesized through these conversations, the views expressed herein are those only of Q Law and do not necessarily reflect the views of those who assisted us in compiling this oral history.