Professor William R. Corbett
LSU Law Center
Professor William R. Corbett is the Frank L. Maraist Professor of Law and the Wex S. Malone Professor of Law at LSU Law Center, where he teaches and writes primarily in the area of Labor and Employment Law, but he also teaches Torts. He is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Professor Corbett served as Interim Dean at LSU Law Center during fiscal year 2015-2016, and served as Vice Chancellor from May 1997 to January 2000. He was honored by the Louisiana Bar Foundation as the 2013 Distinguished Professor. He received his B.A. from Auburn University and his law degree from the University of Alabama, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He also received the M. Leigh Harrison Award presented to those graduating in the top 5 percent. He joined the law faculty at LSU in 1991, after practicing in Birmingham, Alabama with Burr & Forman. Professor Corbett has served as Executive Director of the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel for the last 22 years. Prior to that, he served for several years as Executive Director, and then as faculty advisor, of the Louisiana Judicial College.

Judge Donna Phillips Currault
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
The Honorable Donna Phillips Currault serves as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Before joining the federal bench, she was a member of Gordon, Arata, Montgomery Barnett, McCollam, Duplantis & Eagan, LLC in New Orleans, where she handled complex commercial litigation matters including class and collective actions, business disputes, and business torts. She regularly represented employers in defending claims brought under federal and state anti-discrimination statutes and advised clients on employment agreements and non-competition/non-solicitation issues, prepared employment policies and handbooks, and conducted training on employment matters. Before joining Gordon, Arata, she served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Morey L. Sear, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, from 1989-1990.

Judge Currault graduated magna cum laude from Tulane University School of Law in 1989 and was selected for Order of the Coif. While in law school, she was a Managing Editor and member of the Tulane Law Review. She also served as a Senior Fellow for Tulane Law School’s Legal Research and Writing program.

Currently, Judge Currault is on the Board of Directors of the Foundation of the Federal Bar Association. She is a Life Fellow of the Federal Bar and American Bar Foundations, and Fellow of the Louisiana Bar Foundation and Litigation Counsel of America. She is a past Chair of the FBA’s Labor & Employment Section (2015-16) and is currently President-Elect of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, where she has served as a Director since 2002.
While in private practice, Judge Currault was rated AV® Preeminent™ by Martindale-Hubbell, listed in Best Lawyers in America (Commercial Litigation and Employment Law), Chambers USA Leading Lawyers in Labor & Employment, SuperLawyers Louisiana (Top 25 Women Lawyers and Labor & Employment), Benchmark Top 250 Women in Litigation, and New Orleans “Top Lawyers” in Labor and Employment Law, and selected as a 2020 Leader in the Law honoree by New Orleans CityBusiness.

Mr. Edward F. Harold
Regional Managing Partner
Fisher Phillips
Ed Harold is the Regional Managing Partner of the New Orleans office of Fisher Phillips, a national labor and employment firm representing management. For more than 25 years he has advised employers on managing work force issues and minimizing associated risks. He litigates a wide variety of employment claims from discrimination to trade secrets in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A native New Orleanian, Ed graduated from LSU School of Law in 1992. He is currently chair of the Labor and Employment Section of the New Orleans Bar Association and serves on the board of Junior Achievement of New Orleans. In his spare time, Ed plays golf (poorly), reads a variety of fiction, and soaks up the music, food, and culture of his hometown.

Mr. Gregory T. Juge
Supervisory Trial Attorney
United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
http://www.eeoc.gov
Gregory T. Juge earned his bachelor’s degree as the Outstanding Scholar in Economics from Tulane University in 1988, where he graduated summa cum laude. He received his law degree from the Columbia University School of Law in New York City in 1991. Mr. Juge worked in the field of employment defense at the law firms of Jones Walker and McCalla Thompson before opening a solo practice in 1993. Four years later, in 1997, he joined the EEOC as a Senior Trial Attorney, where he handled individual and class cases involving discrimination and harassment on the basis of age, disability, race, national origin, religion, retaliation, and sex. Mr. Juge tried an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) case which resulted in a federal jury award of $1,291,000 against DuPont Corporation and a same-sex harassment suit against Boh Bros. Construction, which resulted in a federal jury verdict of $451,000. The Boh Bros. verdict led to an en banc decision by the Fifth Circuit in 2013 which has had significant impact in the field of LGBT litigation, recognizing the applicability of the sex-stereotyping theory of liability under Price Waterhouse to the same-sex harassment context and reaffirming the breadth of the Supreme Court’s Oncale decision. Mr. Juge has served as a Supervisory Trial Attorney for the Commission since 2011. Mr. Juge was lead counsel for EEOC in the class action nationwide race discrimination suit against Bass Pro, which resulted in a $10,500,000 settlement and a landmark Fifth Circuit decision on “pattern or practice” litigation. Mr. Juge also litigated one of the EEOC’s first cases dealing with the issue of transgender discrimination, which led to a favorable arbitration decision — recognizing transgender coverage under Title VII — and which was settled through a Consent Decree, presaging the Supreme Court’s 2020 LGBT decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Mr. Juge published an article on the Bostock decision in 2020 in the Louisiana State Bar Journal and has presented on employment discrimination issues at CLE seminars for nearly 30 years.

Mr. Robert B Landry III
Robert B Landry III, PLC
http://www.landryfirm.com
ROBERT B. LANDRY, III is an AV Rated Employment Law Specialist Certified by the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization with offices in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Rob received his BA in Political Science from Tulane University in 1985 and graduated from LSU Law Center in 1988. From 1994 to 2002, he was a partner in the Labor & Employment Section of Chaffe McCall, LLP where he represented numerous Fortune 500 companies with a special emphasis on the healthcare sector. In 2003, Rob transitioned from representing management to representing individuals. Rob became a Registered Civil Mediator in 2022. He has authored numerous articles on employment law issues, both from the management and employee perspective. He is a past Employment Law Section Chair for the Louisiana Association for Justice. He currently serves as the Chair of the Employment Law Advisory Commission of the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization.

Judge Joseph H. L. Perez-Montes
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
JUDGE JOSEPH H,L. PEREZ-MONTES earned his B.A. in History from Louisiana College and his J.D. from Tulane University Law School, both with highest honors.

After law school, Judge Perez-Montes clerked for Chief U.S. District Judge Dee Drell. He then joined the Gold Law Firm in Alexandria, where he practiced primarily in the firm’s employment and labor law section. His practice also included municipal prosecution and criminal defense work.

Judge Perez-Montes was appointed to the bench in December 2015. He also teaches courses in Employment and Business Law at Northwestern State University, and in Workplace Privacy Law at Tulane Law School.

Judge Janis van Meerveld
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
Judge Janis van Meerveld was sworn in as Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana on July 29, 2016. Judge van Meerveld grew up in Brussels, Belgium, and then graduated from Newcomb College of Tulane University in 1984. She obtained her J.D. from Tulane Law School in 1987, where she served on the Moot Court Board, and as an oralist on the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court team.

Prior to taking her seat on the federal bench, Judge van Meerveld practiced for almost 30 years, primarily in the state of Louisiana, starting in the areas of maritime law and general insurance defense, but later developing a specialization in labor and employment. Judge van Meerveld represented management in all areas of employment law, including class actions, ERISA claims, and Directors and Officers liability claims. She frequently assisted clients in the development of employee policies, procedures and handbooks, advised employers on hiring, discipline, and termination policies and practices, and conducted training on many employment related matters.

Judge van Meerveld worked for 27 years as an associate and then partner at Adams and Reese LLP. There, she served as the head of its Labor and Employment team, was a chair of the firm’s Recruiting Committee, and sat on the firm’s Diversity Committee. Judge van Meerveld also served for many years as the chair of the New Orleans-based ABA/EEOC Liaison Committee.

In the community, Judge van Meerveld serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Boys Hope Girls Hope of New Orleans, an organization she has actively served since 1999. From 2012-2020, she was also a member of the Board of Directors of the New Orleans Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Hon. Erin Wilder-Doomes
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana
Judge Erin Wilder-Doomes has been serving as a magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana since January 2016. Prior to her appointment, Judge Wilder-Doomes was a member of Stewart Robbins & Brown, LLC law firm in Baton Rouge where she specialized in civil litigation. As a practitioner, she litigated a wide variety of civil matters, including insurance coverage, bankruptcy, contract disputes, workers’ compensation, and professional liability.

A 1999 graduate of Paul M. Hebert Law Center (LSU), Judge Wilder-Doomes also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Iowa. Throughout her legal career she has been an active participant in professional organizations at a federal, state and local level. She is the Past President and Past National Delegate for the Baton Rouge Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and a former member of the Louisiana State Law Institute Council, which was established by the Louisiana Legislature in 1933 as an institute dedicated to law revision, law reform and legal research. Judge Wilder-Doomes is also a frequent speaker on ethics and professionalism, removal and remand, evidentiary issues and general matters related to federal court practice, and she has served on the faculty of LSU Law Center’s trial advocacy program and Apprenticeship Week. Judge Wilder-Doomes is currently co-presiding judge over the Middle District of Louisiana’s Rehabilitating Individuals through Strategic Encounters (“RISE”) program, which was designed to increase opportunities for successful re-entry of individuals on supervised release by addressing criminogenic factors that lead to recidivism. From 2019 through 2022, she also served as the Fifth Circuit Director on the national board of the Federal Magistrate Judge’s Association.