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Community Lunch with Dean Smock
Registration
Registration is now closed (this event already took place).
Details
Limited seating—RSVP ASAP!
RSVP five days ahead to prevent food waste. Vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options available. For other dietary needs, email us by the RSVP deadline.
Hosted by the Columbia Public Interest Community—part of the Office of Public Interest/Public Service Law and Careers (the PI/PS Office).
Food Provided
Speakers
Erica Smock '95
Assistant Dean and Dean for the Office of Public Interest/Public Service Law and Careers
Columbia Law School
Erica Smock has been the dean for the Office of Public Interest/Public Service Law and Careers at Columbia Law School since 2017.
Prior to joining Columbia, Dean Smock had a distinguished public interest career focused primarily on gender justice and reproductive rights advocacy. Most recently, she served as the senior director for judicial strategy at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York City, where she led strategic campaigns and amicus brief strategy around the center’s domestic litigation, including the successful U.S. Supreme Court abortion case Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016).
After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1995, Dean Smock clerked for the Hon. Anita B. Brody, U.S. District Court, E.D. PA, and Hon. Leonard I. Garth, U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. After spending one year as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers (where she engaged in pro bono work on domestic violence advocacy), she worked as a staff attorney at Legal Aid Services of Oregon and as a regional staff attorney at the Northwest Women's Law Center (now Legal Voice) in Seattle. Dean Smock then became legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she directed the national state legislative program and engaged in advocacy on reproductive rights issues. After working at the PI/PS Office for a number of years, she returned to the Center for Reproductive Rights in 2014 to its newly formed judicial strategy team.
In addition, Dean Smock has spent time as a short-term volunteer attorney focusing on human rights and gender justice in Kenya and South Africa and with the Pascua Yaqui people in Arizona. She has served as a consultant to the Arnold Ventures Foundation on access to justice issues, as a vice chair of the American Bar Association's Rights of Women Committee in the Social Justice Section, and as a member of the Center for Reproductive Rights Lawyers Network Advisory Committee. Presently, Dean Smock is a member of the Social Justice Legal Foundation's Advisory Board. She also serves on the Columbia Law School Anti-Racist Coordinating Committee. In 2024, the United Nations Committee of the New York City Bar recognized Dean Smock for her exceptional commitment to bettering society and improving the lives of women and children through the law.
Dean Smock graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree with honors in political science.