Erika F. Lietzan

Professor Lietzan focuses her scholarship and teaching primarily on the areas of health law and policy, administrative law, and intellectual property. She is a prolific scholar, with more than 40 published book chapters and articles in legal and scientific journals. Some of her recent scholarship has focused on the history of and broader sociocultural context for expanded access (compassionate use) policies for unapproved medicines in the United States and France, the costs and benefits of regulating medical product innovation that emerges from academic medical settings, and plausible pathways forward for cannabis-derived medical and non-medical products.

Professor Lietzan is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency that works on improvements to public administration, management, and administrative procedure. She has also been a member of the American Law Institute since 2006. And she has held one leadership position or another at the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) since 2004, including a stint on its Board of Directors from 2008 to 2012. She held leadership positions in the American Bar Association’s Section of Science and Technology Law for fourteen years.

Professor Lietzan brings to her scholarship and teaching eighteen years of private practice experience, eight of them as a partner in the food and drug group at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC. And she has been consistently identified by her peers in private practice as a “Best Lawyer in America” in the categories of FDA law (since 2013) and Biotechnology Law (since 2007). In practice, she handled a wide range of complex legal problems and broader legislative and regulatory policy questions affecting companies regulated by the FDA. This work included lifecycle management and strategy issues, regulatory strategy and advocacy, white-collar defense, congressional investigations, briefing in product liability cases, and international regulatory policy work.

Professor Lietzan received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina, where she graduated with honors in history. She holds a master’s degree in history from UCLA and a law degree with high honors from Duke Law School.