| Joan Meier has been a clinical law professor for almost 15 years at the George Washington University Law School, where she founded two nationally recognized interdisciplinary domestic violence clinical programs. She has co-authored several significant pieces of federal and state legislation, and provides frequent trainings for state Bars, the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence and other VAWA-funded entities, and courts and other domestic violence programs. She has published widely on domestic violence, and recently received the Cahn Award from the National Equal Justice Library for her article on domestic violence and welfare reform. In 2003 Joan founded the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP), which provides pro bono appellate representation in compelling domestic violence cases. Both before and since DV LEAP’s founding Joan has litigated several cases concerning custody and domestic violence, parental alienation syndrome, and child abuse. Her latest article, "Domestic Violence Child Custody and Child Protection: Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions," A.U. J. of Gender, Soc. Pol. & Law 657, Vol. 11, No. 2, (2003), addresses the challenges of custody litigation involving domestic violence. Most recently, Joan was featured as a commentator in Breaking the Silence: Children’s Voices, the PBS documentary that aired in October 2005. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1980, cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and clerked on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. |