Profile

Sarah Adams-Schoen is a faculty member of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. Her scholarship, applied research, and service focus on climate change law and policy, state and local government law, and land use, focusing on climate resilience in the coastal and inland floodplains and wildland urban interface.

Prof. Adams-Schoen has been called on by state and national bar committees, private foundations, and government agencies including the Environmental Protection and Federal Emergency Management agencies to provide guidance related to coastal resilience. She was a Principal Investigator on a New York Sea Grant to increase coastal resilience and the principal on a grant to draft an annotated model zoning code to facilitate small- and medium-scale wind energy development. She presents frequently on climate change and local law, including recently presenting as a featured speaker at the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law Climate Change Symposium, the keynote speaker at a New York Department of State and United States Geologic Survey conference on water resource management, and a lecturer for the AALS Environmental Law Section.

She brings to her teaching a love of the theory and practice of law, grounded in more than a decade of law practice experience. Prior to embarking on her legal career, she received a Masters in Economics at the London School of Economics and worked as a senior policy analyst for Portland, Oregon’s Metro Regional Government. She received her J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School.

She is admitted to the Oregon State Bar as a Pro Bono Member and to the Federal Bar for the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. She serves on the editorial board of the Urban Lawyer, and as the Chair of the Land Use Committee of the ABA State and Local Government Law Section and as the Section’s liaison to the ABA’s Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. She is also the past chair of OGALLA: The LGBT Bar Association of Oregon