Pitt Law School Staff portraits

Oday Salim, LLM

Staff attorney at National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Regional Center and Director of the University of Michigan Law School’s Environmental Law & Sustainability Clinic

Oday Salim LLM ’09 is a staff attorney at National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Regional Center and Director of the University of Michigan Law School’s Environmental Law & Sustainability Clinic.

Prior to his current position, Oday was the Executive Director and Managing Attorney at Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. Formerly, he served as a staff attorney with the Center. Salim has broad experience in environmental law, including work at private firms and public interest organizations. His expertise includes toxic tort litigation, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, coastal zoning issues and issues related to water usage and pollution in the Great Lakes. He has also worked on international transboundary water allocation and pollution issues, particularly in North America. Salim is also a summer adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark Law School where he teaches Oil & Gas Law.

Salim received his master of law cum laude in natural resources and environmental law from Lewis & Clark Law School in May 2009. His masters thesis addressed “Watershed-based Stormwater Permitting Under the Clean Water Act.” Salim received his juris doctor from Wayne Law in May 2008 where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as a Lombard fellow and a Freeman fellow. As a member of the Jessup International Law Moot court team at Wayne Law, Salim won awards for best oralist and best memorial in the regional competition.

Salim also holds a master of arts in critical theory, which he received magna cum laude in 2005 from the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana and l’Université de Poitiers in France. Salim’s bachelor of arts is from Wayne State University in 2001, where he was a double major in English and Spanish and received a highly competitive President’s scholarship.

Oday’s memories of Lewis & Clark:

I remember leaving class to hike in Tryon Creek State Park and appreciating the amazing and literal connection between my education and the natural environment. I remember drafting my first pleading and presenting at my first case rounds and doing my first document review at PEAC. I remember how lucky and grateful I felt at the end of each semester knowing that I’d learned this area of law from professors I so admired and in a place with such wonderful staff and students. And of course, I remember the hundreds of perfectly pulled espresso shots from all the coffee shops where I worked and studied.