Biography

Professor Valerie L. Collins teaches legal writing at Howard University School of Law. An experienced appellate and public-interest litigator, her teaching and professional interests include legal writing and advocacy, labor and employment law, civil rights, and access to justice.

Before joining the Howard Law faculty, Professor Collins was a litigation attorney at Towards Justice, where she used litigation, administrative advocacy, and legislative advocacy to advance workers’ rights and economic justice. Her work included challenges involving forced prison labor, agricultural worker protections, wage theft, workplace health and safety, employment discrimination, whistleblower protections, collective action, and labor trafficking. She also worked extensively on legislative and regulatory efforts to strengthen protections for workers.

Previously, Professor Collins served for nearly six years as an appellate attorney with the National Labor Relations Board. She was the primary author of dozens of briefs filed in the federal courts of appeals and presented dozens of oral arguments on behalf of the agency before federal appellate courts throughout the country. Earlier in her career, she practiced litigation at Jones Day.

Professor Collins began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and then to Judge Andre M. Davis of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Professor Collins earned her J.D. magna cum laude from Howard University School of Law, where she graduated salutatorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Howard Law Journal. She received her B.A. from American University. Before joining the faculty full time, she spent a decade helping teach appellate legal writing and advocacy through Howard Law’s Charles Hamilton Houston Moot Court Team.

Professor Collins’s scholarship includes Camouflaged Legitimacy: Civil Commitment, Property Rights, and Legal Isolation, published in the Howard Law Journal, as well as a chapter addressing private litigation arising from the COVID-19 pandemic in Bloomberg Law’s Occupational Safety and Health Law. She frequently speaks on issues involving workers’ rights, labor and employment law, prison labor, and public-interest advocacy. She also serves as a volunteer and mentor with The Appellate Project.