Susan M. Hoffman

Following her graduation from law school, Ms. Hoffman was a law clerk to U.S. 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 to 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 and  public interest group boards, including Legal Counsel for the Elderly, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project, 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 D.C. Bar Foundation. Her past bar involvement includes service on the D.C. Bar Board of Governors, as co-chair of the D.C. Circuit Standing Committee on Pro Bono, on the Board of Governors' 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.