Mitchell Ethan Lucarelli Biography
It is with sadness and regret that we inform our community of the death of one of our long-term part-time faculty members, Mr. Mitchell Ethan Lucarelli (Ethan), who taught Telecommunications Law at GW Law since the fall of 2012, and also coached our National Telecommunications and Technology Moot Court Teams seven times over the past ten years.
His loss will be keenly felt by our deans, faculty, and staff, but most especially by the many, many students whom he taught and those he coached over the last several years in the Moot Court Competitions.
Mr. Lucarelli excelled in both public and private sector roles throughout his career. In 2020, he joined the Federal Communications Commission and quickly advanced to become Chairwoman Rosenworcel's Wireless and Public Safety Legal Advisor. Ultimately, Mr. Lucarelli was named the first Chief of the Commission's Office of International Affairs. In this role, which he helped to create, Mr. Lucarelli successfully built, and managed, an extensive team of attorneys, engineers, and professional staff. As Chief, he was responsible for leading many of the Commission’s international activities, including treaty negotiations, bilateral and multilateral engagements, and international standard-setting work.
For the last Telecommunications and Technology Moot Court Competition Mr. Lucarelli coached in spring semester 2024, he had this to say: “Each woman came to this competition as an individual, but they quickly gelled as a team and worked together collaboratively and supportively better than teams that have been together for years." He was exceptionally proud of what they accomplished, continuing GW Law's tradition of excellence at this competition. Mr. Lucarelli added, "I greatly appreciated the dedication and the effort of the students. I'm also indebted to the 12 members of the GW Law community (current students and grads) and several other practitioners who helped our team prepare through more than 10 practice sessions.”
Dean David Johnson noted, “Ethan was one of our top advocacy adjunct professor coaches. He easily married his vast knowledge of Telecommunications Law with skillful teaching, great care for our students, and — yes — success. His teams won the Championship once, finished second four times, won Best Brief twice, and only failed to advance once. Ethan was irreplaceable and will be sorely missed.”
Mr. Lucarelli’s family and friends are raising money for a fund in his honor to provide an annual award to the best student in the moot court program and to sponsor a team to participate in a telecoms moot court competition. Please visit their GoFundMe site below.
The family reports they are humbled and grateful for the financial support already provided toward this campaign honoring Ethan, and that Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew and the GW Law Development and Alumni Relations Office have generously offered to sponsor a matching gift for the Ethan Lucarelli Moot Court Fund. If the GoFundMe goal of $50,000 is reached by June 30th ($44,605 at the time of this writing), the law school will match that $50K.