Elizabeth Frumkin graduated with honors from Dartmouth College and with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. Following law school, she served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Following her clerkship, she was a Litigation Associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago and at Ropes & Gray in Boston, where she handled a variety of complex litigation, including commercial, securities, and tort law matters. While at Ropes & Gray, she led the Litigation Department’s highly successful pro bono program, in which litigation associates represented clients seeking political asylum.
Frumkin served as Assistant Attorney General in the Appeals Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Criminal Bureau, where she handled a wide-ranging caseload that included both civil and criminal matters at all levels of state and federal court in Massachusetts, including appellate work arising out of the Attorney General's criminal prosecutions; the representation of judges, prosecutors, and other officials of the Massachusetts criminal justice system; and a variety of other civil and criminal litigation affecting the Massachusetts criminal justice system.
Frumkin then joined the faculty at Harvard Law School, where she taught as a Climenko/Thayer Lecturer in Law and participated in the creation and implementation of Harvard's First-Year Lawyering Program, a year-long lawyering skills course now required of all Harvard 1L students. She then joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law, where she taught Constitutional Law: Foreign Affairs and the Constitution, Seminar: Legal Issues in the War on Terrorism, and Fundamentals of American Law, a required course for international LL.M. students.
Frumkin has been deeply involved as a community leader and has served on numerous municipal and non-profit boards, working in such areas as environmental conservation, community service, philanthropy, and education.
