Meet the newest members of our community and learn why they chose GW Law.
William S. Dodge
“I came to GW Law to join a very strong faculty in international and comparative law. If you are interested in international law in the United States, Washington, DC is the place to be.”
William S. Dodge is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution. He is a Founding Editor of TLB, the Transnational Litigation Blog. He joined the George Washington University Law School faculty in 2024 after teaching at UC Davis School of Law (2015-2024) and UC Law San Francisco (1995-2015).
Professor Dodge is currently a Reporter for the second phase of the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law. He also serves as a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and an Adviser to the ALI’s Restatement (Third) of the Conflict of Laws. He previously served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as Co-Reporter for the first phase of the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018.
Professor Dodge is co-author (with Detlev Vagts, Hannah Buxbaum, and Harold Koh) of the casebook Transnational Business Problems (7th ed. Foundation Press 2024), co-author (with George Bermann and Donald Childress) of Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell (2d ed. West 2021), and co-editor (with David Sloss and Michael Ramsey) of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge University Press 2011), which won the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificate of merit. He has more than 80 other publications in books and law reviews, including the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada have relied on his work.
Professor Dodge teaches International Business Transactions, International Litigation and Arbitration, Conflict of Laws, and Contracts. He won the Distinguished Teaching Award both at UC Davis and at UC Law San Francisco.
Professor Dodge received his BA in History, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1986. After teaching English in Tianjin, China, he attended Yale Law School, where he was a Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal, served as Director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, and earned his JD in 1991. Professor Dodge clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1993 to 1995, he was an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC.
Kristoffer Svendsen
"I am honored to join GW Law. I look forward to contributing to cutting-edge research and teaching that equips students to navigate and shape the future of energy policy and regulation."
Dr. Kristoffer Svendsen joined GW Law in June 2024 as the Assistant Dean for the Energy Law Program. He brings 13 years of experience teaching, writing, managing programs, and mentoring students on domestic and international energy law issues in various contexts.
Dean Svendsen has a Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws from Bond University, Australia, specializing in public and energy law. After Australia, he went on to undertake another Master of Laws in Russian oil and gas law at MGIMO-University. Dean Svendsen worked for a Russian investment bank and a Moscow law firm for several years. Leaving Moscow, he worked for the EU-Russia Centre in Brussels on energy and rule-of-law issues for EU-Russia relations. Dean Svendsen left Belgium to undertake his PhD in law at the Arctic University of Norway, which focused on liability and compensation rules for cross-border oil spills from offshore installations in the Barents Sea.
Before arriving at GW, Dean Svendsen worked as the Assistant Director of the Tulane Center for Energy Law, Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger, an associate member of the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law, Of Counsel of a Moscow law firm, a visiting scholar at Duke University Law School, and volunteered for 2014 Sochi Olympics. He also works periodically as an Arbitrator.
Dean Svendsen has guest lectured globally and published extensively about liability and compensation for offshore oil pollution damage, contractual risk allocation in oil and gas-related contracts, offshore wind, deep sea mining, international oil spill disputes, pure economic loss, and Russian energy and environmental law. His most recent books are: Kristoffer Svendsen, Liability and Compensation for Offshore Oil Pollution Damage in the Arctic, (Brill, 2023); and Kristoffer Svendsen, Endre Stavang and Greg Gordon (eds), Knock-for-Knock Indemnities and the Law Contractual Limitation and Delictual Liability (Routledge, 2023). Dean Svendsen's upcoming book is titled Research Handbook on Offshore Wind Law and will be published by Edward Elgar in its Research Handbook series on Energy Law in 2024/2025.
Dean Svendsen is admitted to practice law in New York and New South Wales.
Dean Svendsen is originally from Norway and is an avid soccer player and runner.
Catlin Meade
"I chose GW Law because it puts a lot of the focus of the first year experience on the foundational skills taught in the Fundamentals of Lawyering Program. I am excited to be part of an institution that recognized the importance of those skills, and supplemented them with professional identity formation and development via the Inns of Court Program, before it was mandated by the ABA."
Professor Meade joined the George Washington University Law School in 2024 after two years teaching Legal Writing at Washington & Lee University School of Law.
Prior to transitioning to academia, Professor Meade practiced for nearly ten years in Washington, DC, first as an associate attorney at Covington & Burling LLP and later as in-house counsel for a large government contracting firm. Her practice primarily focused on cybersecurity and data privacy, but also included government and internal investigations, government contracting issues, and SAFETY Act work. Professor Meade maintained an active and varied pro bono practice, including several veterans benefits appeals and amicus briefs on behalf of non-profit organizations.
While in practice, Professor Meade also served as an adjunct professor at American University Washington College of Law where she taught Legal Rhetoric. She was named Legal Rhetoric Adjunct Professor of the Year for the 2021-22 academic year, an award based on student nominations and evaluations. Professor Meade's experience as an adjunct spurred her to pivot to full-time teaching.
Barak D. Richman
“GW Law is an exhilarating place and Washington, DC is an exhilarating place. There is enormous scholarly energy, intellectual stimulation, and policy work – it’s a law professor’s candy store.”
Barak Richman’s primary research interests include the economics of contracting, new institutional economics, antitrust, and healthcare policy. His work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. In 2006, he co-edited with Clark Havighurst a symposium volume of Law and Contemporary Problems entitled "Who Pays? Who Benefits? Distributional Issues in Health Care,” and his book Stateless Commerce was published by Harvard University Press in 2017.
Professor Richman represented the NFL Coaches Association in an amicus curiae brief in American Needle v. The Nat’l Football League, which was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2010 and again in Brady v. The Nat’l Football League in 2011. His recent work challenging illegal practices by Rabbinical Associations was featured in the New York Times. And in 2020, he was a member of the Working Group on Platform Scale at Stanford University’s Program on Democracy and the Internet that proposed middleware as a solution to stem the economic and political power of dominant internet platforms.
Professor Richman also is on the Health Sector Management faculty at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and is a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. He won Duke Law School's Blueprint Award in 2005 and was named Teacher of the Year in 2010. He has had visiting appointments at Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford.
Professor Richman has an AB, magna cum laude, from Brown University, a JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Nobel Laureate in Economics Oliver Williamson. He served as a law clerk to Judge Bruce M. Selya of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1994-1996 he handled international trade legislation as a staff member of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, then chaired by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.