Prof. Emily A. Spieler

Dr. Emily A. Spieler is professor of law and Dean Emerita at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts.

Prior to her academic career, she served as the commissioner of West Virginia's Workers' Compensation Fund (an exclusive state fund), as West Virginia’s first deputy attorney general for civil rights, and as a member of the state’s Human Rights Commission, and as a member of the Public Employees’ Insurance Agency Finance Board, responsible for designing the health insurance options for all West Virginia public employees. She has served as chair of the Whistleblower Protection Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Labor; as a member of President Obama’s Transition Team for the U.S. Department of Labor; as chair of the Workers’ Advocacy Advisory Committee, a federal advisory committee appointed to advise the U.S. Department of Energy on the implementation of the Energy Employees’ Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act; and as a member of several other national committees focusing on workplace health and safety and workers’ compensation.

Spieler's law practice, before joining the faculty at West Virginia University College of Law, concentrated on the legal problems of workers, particularly injured workers. In her teaching, she focuses on issues of job security and worker health and safety, and she has published widely in the areas of workers’ compensation and occupational safety and health. 

She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the Pound Institute for Civil Justice, the Collegium Ramazzini and the American College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers; an elected member of the National Academic of Social Insurance; and a member of the Bar in Massachusetts and West Virginia. She received her AB degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and her JD from Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut.