Lois Schiffer
Lois Schiffer is an environmental lawyer with extensive experience in natural resources and pollution protection laws through her work in federal jobs, in private practice, and for non-profit organizations. She retired in January 2017 as General Counsel at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where she served since 2010. From 1993-2001, Ms. Schiffer served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, with responsibility for cases related to pollution, natural resources, wildlife, tribal law, and federal lands.
Previously Ms. Schiffer served as General Counsel to National Capital Planning Commission and National Public Radio. She was in private practice at Washington D. C. law firms for ten years. For 30 years she was an adjunct professor of environmental law at Georgetown University Law Center. She has served on a number of non-profit boards,and continues to serve as a Board Member of the Conservation Law Foundation and the Chesapeake Legal Alliance, on the Litigation Committee of the Potomac Riverkeeper, and as an Emeritus Board Member of the International Senior Lawyers Project. She was an elected delegate from the District of Columbia to the ABA House of Delegates for several years. In the 1970’s she worked at the Women’s Rights Project of the Center for Law and Social Policy, and has supported inclusion of women and minorities throughout her career.
Ms. Schiffer has worked with the District of Columbia federal court mediation program since its beginning in approximately 1990. She has mediated many cases, and through her work at Justice and other places been involved in the negotiation of many significant settlements.
Ms. Schiffer has degrees from Radcliffe College (AB. Magna Cum Laude) and Harvard Law School (J.D. Cum Laude), and an honorary degree from Vermont Law School.
Board Member since 2025.
