Karen Alicia Shaw

Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Dr. Karen Alicia Shaw is the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Accreditation and an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.  She works with the dean and senior administrators to oversee and facilitate a broad range of projects regarding the law school’s academic and administrative goals, initiatives, and policies. She also manages all law school accreditation matters regarding the American Bar Association and other external bodies. 

In addition, Dr. Shaw teaches in the following areas: health law, health literacy and law, legal writing (health law focused), international development law and policy research, and socio-legal studies.   More so, she currently serves as a subject matter expert for health literacy standard-setting in organizational systems and policies with the Health Literacy Solutions Center at the Institute for Health Care Advancement. 

Dr. Shaw holds an S.J.D. degree in Health Law and Policy from Loyola, where her dissertation employed a systemic content analysis of Medicaid class actions through the lens of cooperative federalism and institutional reform litigation to devise a framework for defining “reasonably prompt” health care services for children. She also holds an L.L.M. degree in Health Law from Loyola; a J.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh, where she served as an associate editor for the Journal of Law and Commerce; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies with minors in Professional Writing and Business Administration from DePaul University.

Presentation (PDF format): The Role and Impact of Unpublished Federal Court Decisions in Health Law Jurisprudence: Concerns and Opportunities in Legal Research and Writing