Professor William R. Corbett
LSU Law Center
Professor William R. Corbett holds the Frank L. Maraist, Wex S. Malone, Rosemary Neal Hawkland, and Cheney C. Joseph Professorships at LSU Law Center, where he teaches and writes primarily in the area of Labor and Employment Law, but he also teaches Torts and Louisiana Civil Procedure. 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 25 years. Prior to that, he served for several years as Executive Director, and then as faculty advisor, of the Louisiana Judicial College.
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
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.
Hon. Joseph H. L. Perez-Montes
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
Magistrate Judge Perez-Montes earned his his J.D. from Tulane Law School with highest honors, having served as a managing editor of the Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Chief U.S. District Judge Dee Drell before joining the Gold Law Firm in Alexandria. There he practiced primarily in employment and labor law, although his practice included other areas like criminal defense and municipal administration defense. Judge Perez-Montes was appointed as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in December 2015. He has taught employment and business law courses aat LSUA, Northwestern State University, and 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.
