OU College of Law Professor Emeritus Receives 2022 OBA Earl Sneed Award

NORMAN, OKLA. – OU College of Law Professor Emeritus Robert Spector was recently named the recipient of the 2022 Oklahoma Bar Association Earl Sneed Award during the OBA Annual Conference.

“Throughout his acclaimed career, Robert Spector has helped to advance and improve the quality of family law advocacy in the state of Oklahoma,” said Katheleen Guzman, dean of the OU College of Law. “Many careers have been positively impacted by Roberts’s devotion to the education of students and his outstanding contributions to the continuing legal education of practitioners.”

This award, named after a former OU Law dean, honors those who make outstanding contributions to continuing legal education. Spector is receiving this award for the second time in recognition of his three decades of ongoing contributions to continuing legal education.

Spector speaks at the annual OBA Family Law Section meeting every year, providing a lecture on recent developments, an analysis of the published appellate cases over the last year, and Hidden Law, a summary of the unpublished family law cases. Spector also frequently presents during OBA CLE events, such as the Solo and Small Firm Conference and the OBA Annual Meeting.

His widely acclaimed expertise in family law also benefits attorneys in other parts of the United States and other nations through his participation in the Uniform Law Commission, attendance at the Hague Conference on Private International Law to draft conventions for the return of kidnaped children internationally, and as a guest lecturer at countless conferences.

He received his juris doctorate from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1966 and was a faculty member at Loyola University in Chicago for 13 years before joining the OU Law faculty in 1980. Spector is currently the Glenn R. Watson chair and Centennial Professor of Law emeritus at the OU College of Law. He also has served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois, University of North Carolina and Suffolk University in Boston.