Robert Meyers has joined Glankler Brown PLLC as a member, and it isn’t his first time around this block. He worked for the firm as a newly licensed attorney right out of law school.

He’s returned, he said, because clients were asking for more work that was “outside of the traditional four corners of labor and employment law,” which he practices, and he was looking for a full-service practice to offer the additional tools and expertise required to meet those needs.

“So many of the people are still the same and the culture is essentially the same now as when I left,” he said of his return to Glankler Brown.

“So many of the people are still the same and the culture is essentially the same now as when I left.”

– Robert Meyers
Member, Glankler Brown PLLC

With his father in the Army at the time, Meyers was born in France and spent years moving around France and Germany, with a stint at the Memphis Defense Depot along the way. When it came time to settle down, the family moved back to Memphis, where they’d bought a house years before, and 14-year-old Meyers went to Bishop Byrne High School.

He attended the University of Tennessee-Martin for a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in philosophy. The plan was to enter anesthesia school, which required he enroll in nursing school. He did so at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in nursing.

For two years, Meyers worked in critical care settings, yet “abandoned that dream for a new dream of going to law school,” he said. He left Memphis for Knoxville and the University of Tennessee College of Law.

“It had to do with being more independent, charting my own course,” he said of his career switch. “I felt that, as a lawyer, I would ultimately have more autonomy, and at the same time, it would give me the thing that I liked most about nursing, and that was that I could help people.”

When he graduated in 1986, it was back to Memphis and round one with Glankler Brown. After three years, the nomadic Meyers joined the Hardison Law Firm PC for four years, then spent another four at Spicer Flynn & Rudstrom. A decade was spent at the Memphis office of Littler Mendelson PC, where he developed his specialties of labor and employment law, civil rights defense and workers’ compensation defense.

He finds his work comparable to the vocation of nursing, saying, “My job is to help you – that’s the kind of lawyer I want to be. I want to, in some way, help you through your problem, help you avoid a problem; my job is to help.”

He counts the city of Memphis as one of his marquee clients and is humbled by the work.

“It’s been an honor for me to have served five different city attorneys in two different administrations.”

In a public capacity, Meyers has worked as chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission for the past four years. Recently reappointed by the state election commission with this term up in 2015, his duties are to oversee the operations from a policy standpoint, making sure all applicable state and federal laws are followed.

“One of the things lawyers strive to do is to find ways to give back to their communities, and this is a way I’ve been fortunate enough to be asked to do, and I’m proud to do it.”

Looking after clients’ needs and the smooth running of county elections is more than a full-time job, and Meyers and his wife, Debbie – a Hewlett-Packard employee working in telecommunication services at International Paper – enjoy sampling and collecting wine, traveling and the variety of live concerts offered around town.

Meyers is a well-rounded attorney, having brought his experiences living abroad, and skills and empathy from his time as a nurse into the legal field. He also has counted those around him as assets along the way.

“I’ve been very fortunate and I’ve had a number of great lawyers as mentors throughout my career at the different stops along the way, and I certainly wouldn’t have the legal success that I currently have without their mentoring me, as well as the support of other people who supported me, such as associates and staff.”