Elizabeth Ford

In private practice for 25 years, Ford represented unions and individual employees. She also served as Chief Counsel for the Washington State Nurses Association and the Director of Labor Relations for King County.

In 2005, she joined the faculty fulltime as Visiting Legal Writing Professor.  She continued as a Visiting Clinical Professor, establishing and teaching the law school's first Mediation Clinic. After leaving SU to serve as the Director of Labor Relations, Ford returned to continue directing the Mediation Clinic and to develop a pilot legal skills course that incorporated dispute resolution into the second-year legal writing curriculum. In 2010, she joined the University of Washington School of Law as Assistant Dean.

In 2015 Ford founded the Fair Work Center Legal Clinic, which is a non-profit legal services office which operates in collaboration with the Peterson Law Clinic to provide representation to low wage workers.

Professor Ford serves frequently as a mediator and arbitrator primarily in labor and employment disputes.  She is a member of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and Public Employment Relations Commission's panel of arbitrators. 

Prof. Ford publishes in the area of workplace minimum standards, labor negotiations, and clinical teaching. Her scholarship can be found here.