Susan M. Hoffman is currently Public Service Partner at Crowell & Moring where she promotes, supervises and participates in the pro bono work performed by the Firm's attorneys. The pro bono work of the Firm ranges from representation of the homeless, elderly individuals and persons living with AIDS to assisting domestic violence victims in obtaining protection orders to “impact” and appellate litigation. Ms. Hoffman serves as President of the Crowell & Moring Foundation, a separate nonprofit organization.
Following her graduation from George Washington Law School in 1979, Ms. Hoffman was a law clerk to United States District Judge Harold H. Greene. She joined Crowell & Moring in 1988 after practicing in the litigation section of Hogan & Hartson. While at Hogan & Hartson, she handled varied aspects of civil litigation, working on cases at the trial court and appellate levels, including the U.S. Supreme Court. An important part of her career at Hogan & Hartson included work on a variety of pro bono matters, including administrative litigation on behalf of a coalition of environmental groups, appellate litigation on behalf of public interest organizations, such as the Children’s Defense Fund, and trial-level litigation to obtain protection orders for domestic violence victims.
Ms. Hoffman has worked on issues affecting children both on the professional and personal levels. She volunteered from 1981-1988 with a local shelter for battered women and their children, My Sister’s Place, as a children’s program volunteer, helped to create the shelter’s Children’s Committee and served on the shelter's Board of Directors for several years. Ms. Hoffman has herself represented and supervised representation by other attorneys in her Firm in child abuse and neglect cases and in domestic violence, adoption and child custody litigation. Ms. Hoffman serves as a faculty member for the D.C. Bar’s Child Custody and Domestic Violence training courses and has made presentations to social workers in the D.C. Public Health system, groups of non-parent caregivers, church and other community groups about child custody and family violence issues.
Ms. Hoffman has served on several community or public interest group boards, including Legal Counsel for the Elderly, the Support Center of Greater Washington, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, the United Way Law Firms Division, the Center for Dispute Resolution and the Washington Council of Lawyers. She is active in local bar activities, currently serving as Board President of the Foundation of the Bar Association of D.C. Her past Bar involvement includes service on the D.C. Bar Board of Governors, on the D.C. Circuit Standing Committee on Pro Bono, on the Board of Governor's Screening Committee and as a member of the D.C. Bar Nominations Committee and the D.C. Bar Public Services Activities Review Committee. She has been a mediator in alternative dispute resolution programs of the U.S. District Court for D.C. and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Education
George Washington University Law School, J.D., 1979
Affiliations
Admitted to practice: District of Columbia, U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia