Maxine Lipeles

Senior Lecturer in Law; Director, Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic

Maxine I. Lipeles is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the University’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic. With students and faculty in law, engineering, science, and other fields, the Clinic represents communities and individuals in environmental and public health matters free of charge. Admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Missouri and Illinois, she teaches Environmental Law and Climate Change and the Law at Washington University and previously was a part-time professor for the university’s Department of Engineering and Policy and Department of Civil Engineering as well as the past Director of the Environmental Engineering Program for Washington University. Lipeles has been consistently recognized as one of the best environmental attorneys in the country and was a past recipient of a Professor of the Year Award from the law school’s Student Bar Association. In addition to her teaching and administrative duties running the clinic, she is the author and co-author of two casebooks: one on hazardous waste and another on water pollution. Before joining the university, Lipeles practiced for the St. Louis law firm Husch & Eppenberger (now Husch Blackwell Sanders) for eighteen years, achieving the rank of partner; she also worked as an Assistant Attorney General for the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Environmental Protection Division. Prior to practicing law, she clerked for the Honorable William H. Orrick, Judge of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California in San Francisco.