JOEL A. SMITH

Mr. Smith is a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Maryland School of Law. He received the Joseph Bernstein Prize for legal writing from the University of Maryland in 1976. He was admitted to practice in the State of Maryland in 1976, and is also admitted to practice before the United States Courts of Appeal for the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth and District of Columbia Circuits. He has appeared in numerous appellate arguments before those and other courts.

For the past twenty-five years, Mr. Smith has served as legal counsel and advisor to elected officers and representatives of labor and civic organizations on the local, national and state levels. He has represented workers in occupations as diverse as national professional sports, television, movies, theater arts, building trades, public schools, community college and undergraduate instruction, retail sales, manufacturing, public transit and heavy industry. Mr. Smith helped organize employees of the University System of Maryland and the World Umpires Association, which is the collective bargaining agent for Major League Baseball's umpires.

Mr. Smith is also recognized as having particular expertise in the public education laws of Maryland, and public sector labor law. He has appeared as a guest speaker before the National Academy of Arbitrators, Maryland's Education Law Institute, George Meany Center for Labor Studies, and before the hearing examiners of the Maryland Department of Employment and Economic Development. Mr. Smith has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America since 1990 and Baltimore Magazine in his area of specialization. He has been a member of the Section Councils of the Maryland State Bar Association of the Association's Sections on Administrative Law and on Labor Law.

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