Missouri Lawyers Media recently awarded Professor Karen Tokarz with its 2024 ICON Honor. Tokarz is one of 25 distinguished advocates to receive this year’s honor, which recognizes lawyers who have “demonstrated notable, sustained success, and strong leadership within and outside the field of law.”
“I am deeply humbled to receive this award from my peers in Missouri,” Tokarz said. “It is a testament to the incredible support of my colleagues at WashU Law and the strength of our shared mission with the community.”
Tokarz joined WashU Law in 1980 and was named the inaugural Charles Nagel Professor of Public Interest Law & Policy in 2008. Her teaching and scholarship address a broad range of public interest law and policy issues, a passion stemming from her first job after college working under St. Louis City Juvenile Court Judge Theodore McMillian, the first African-American state court judge in Missouri.
“He frequently said, ‘If you want to help these kids, go to law school,’ and what he meant was, if you want to help the public, go to law school,” Tokarz recalled.
Tokarz followed his advice and received her Juris Doctor from Saint Louis University in 1976 as well as a graduate law degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985.
In the years since, Tokarz has dedicated her career to programs and causes benefiting the public, locally, nationally and internationally. She s a highly regarded civil rights mediator and the co-founder and President of the St. Louis Mediation Project, which helps tenants, homeowners, landlords, and lenders solve housing disputes through mediation in and out of court. Tokarz also founded the law school’s Global Public Interest Law Fellows Program, which has coordinated international field placements for more than 200 law students to bring legal aid and humanitarian support to underserved people in Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia.
Today, Tokarz leads WashU Law’s innovative Negotiation & Dispute Resolution Program and teaches several courses in the School of Law, including Introduction to Negotiation & Dispute Resolution, Mediation Theory & Practice, Housing & Community Development, and the school’s Civil Rights, Community Justice & Mediation Clinic, which partners with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. She also coordinates the law school’s popular Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series, now in its third decade.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Tokarz on a celebrated career and wishing her continued success! Read the full announcement from Missouri Lawyers Media here.