Trilby Robinson-Dorn

Expertise:

Employment Law; Pay Equity; Legal Education; Women in the Profession; Lawyering Skills; Legal Profession; Client Counseling; Litigation; Business Transactions

Background:

Vice Dean and Professor Trilby Robinson-Dorn is an experienced lawyer who has served in academic leadership roles at UC Irvine School of Law for over a decade.  Professor Robinson-Dorn has served on the leadership teams of every UC Irvine School of Law Dean.  Since 2024, Robinson-Dorn has served as the law school’s Vice Dean, overseeing the law school’s JD academic program and working closely with the Dean on a variety of matters.  She previously served as the law school’s Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2020 to 2024 and as Associate Dean of Lawyering Skills from 2016 to 2019. 

Professor Robinson-Dorn currently teaches, researches, and presents in the areas of pay equity, employment law, and legal education.  She has taught a range of doctrinal, skills-based, and clinical courses at UCI Law.  Robinson-Dorn also founded and directs UCI Law’s Pay Equity Project and has served as a consultant to UC Irvine’s Pay Equity Review Workgroup.  In the Fall of 2023, she was selected as a Whiteley Scholar and conducted research on pay equity in academia at University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratory.

Robinson-Dorn has chaired or served on numerous national, statewide, campus, and law school committees including Equal Pay Today’s Litigation and Research Committee (Co-Chair); the AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers 2026 Planning Committee (Chair); two UCI Law Dean’s Search Committees; the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics; UCI’s Council on Equity and Inclusion; the law school’s Faculty Advisory Committee; the law school’s Appointments Committee; and many others.  She is a graduate of the University of California Women’s Initiative for Professional Development (representing UC Irvine) and Seattle’s Leadership Tomorrow program.

Robinson-Dorn joined the UCI Law faculty in 2011 with fourteen years of practice experience.  She was previously a partner in the Seattle and Orange County offices of the international law firm K&L Gates, where her practice focused on employment litigation and counseling as well as handling the employment components of mergers and acquisitions.  Robinson-Dorn also has practice experience as a seconded in-house employment counsel for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as a cooperating attorney handling civil liberties cases for the ACLU of Washington, and as pro bono counsel on a range of employment, immigration, and environmental matters.

Throughout her career, Robinson-Dorn has participated actively in efforts to improve the status and pay of women, including as Chair of King County Washington Women Lawyers in Seattle; on the K&L Gates Women in the Profession Committee; in leadership and faculty advisory roles at UCI Law; as an ACLU of Washington Board and Executive Committee Member; and as an ACLU Cooperating Attorney litigating women’s and children’s rights cases.

Robinson-Dorn received her B.A, with Honors, from Swarthmore College, and her J.D., cum laude, from Tulane Law School.  She is a member of the California and Washington State bars.

Prior Courses:

Animal Law: Litigation, Community & Economic Development Clinic, Advanced Community & Economic Development Clinic, Advanced Community & Economic Development Clinic WCC, Employment Law, Lawyering Skills I, Lawyering Skills II, Legal Profession, Pay Equity Law

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