Meet President-Elect Candidate Diane Seltzer
March 11, 2025
The D.C. Bar’s 2025 general and Communities elections will run from April 15 to June 4. Eligible voters will receive an email link to their ballots via Survey & Ballot Systems, an independent vendor administering the elections. Results of the elections will be announced on the Bar’s website and during the 2025 Celebration of Leadership on June 26.
Here, get to know Diane Seltzer, one of two candidates running for D.C. Bar president-elect for the 2025–2026 term. The president-elect serves for one year before becoming president and then continues in office a third year as immediate past president.
If given the opportunity to serve as president-elect, Diane Seltzer, principal of the Seltzer Law Firm, will focus on supporting D.C. Bar members during a time of great uncertainty and transition.
“I love thinking about the role of lawyers and courts during the next few years to maintain the rule of law,” Seltzer said.
With nearly three decades of expertise in employment law, Seltzer is well-versed in regulations pertaining to employee removal, reduction in force, performance, and conduct. “I’ve advised dozens of federal employees just in the last month on what their rights are. They are the backbone of making sure that things get done,” said Seltzer, a current member of the D.C. Bar Board of Governors. “They are having their jobs threatened or pulled against all procedural protections that the vast majority of them have, and they are panicking.”
“So, what do [the federal employees] do? They ask lawyers for help. Fortunately, we are here. I feel like lawyers and the courts are going to be the protectors of the public,” Seltzer said, adding that she hopes the D.C. Bar will be a solid foundation for lawyers to feel supported and not alone.
Seltzer also wants to accentuate the issues of a multigenerational legal profession. With four generations of attorneys — from Boomers to Gen Z — coming together in the workplace, law firms are having to understand the varying approaches to work and how those differences can coexist in a healthy environment that promotes both professional productivity and work–life balance.
“That interests me as both a sociology major … and as an employment lawyer,” said Seltzer, describing herself as someone with high energy and who loves people.
Seltzer has devoted years of service to the Bar. After becoming a member in 1992, she started teaching CLE classes at the Bar, joining the Continuing Legal Education Committee in 2012.
She served three terms as committee chair (2016–2017, 2022–2023, and 2023–2024) and as vice chair from 2015 to 2016.
In addition, Seltzer has served on the D.C. Bar’s Strategic Planning Committee (2020–2025) as well as on its Screening, Communities, and Nominations Committees. In 2021 Seltzer was voted onto the D.C. Bar Board of Governors, where she currently serves on its Executive Committee. Previously, she sat on its Budget Committee and Compensation Subcommittee. She was also board secretary from 2020 to 2021.
“I became active in the Bar because it is diverse,” Seltzer said. “Every step of my journey, there were people saying, ‘Come join us. You want to work hard? Well, we’ve got work for you. We will be nice to you. And we don’t all look alike.’”
“So, I don’t understand a world where that is not valued and embraced. I think we’ve come too far for that to be something that we discard,” she added.
If elected D.C. Bar president-elect, Seltzer wants members to know her as someone who is engaged and present. “I want people to say, ‘She cares about our Bar; she listened to us. She was open to the suggestions and recommendations that were presented to her. And she took action and got stuff done.’”
Seltzer earned her law degree in 1991 from American University Washington College of Law. After graduation, she clerked for Judge Frederick C. Wright III, Judge John P. Corderman, and Judge Daniel Moylan of the Circuit Court for Washington County, Maryland.
In 1997 she launched her private practice, the Seltzer Law Firm. Seven years later, she joined two other attorneys in annually providing employment discrimination law training to federal judicial law clerks in Maryland. In 2016 the judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland presented Seltzer with its Exceptional Service Award.
An adjunct professor at American University since 2003, Seltzer developed and teaches “Human Resources Compliance” for the school’s Master of Legal Studies program.
Seltzer has been peer-rated through Thomson Reuters as a Super Lawyer in Maryland and Washington, D.C., for numerous years. Bethesda magazine has named her three times as one of the area’s top employment law attorneys.
As the granddaughter of a lieutenant in the Fire Department of the City of New York, Seltzer enjoys helping firefighters, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and police officers in obtaining, or being reinstated to, positions that they were prohibited from holding due to protected characteristics. She has served on the steering committee of the National Capital Region 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb & 5K Walk hosted by the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department. Seltzer became certified as a Maryland EMT and served until June 2012 as a volunteer with the Glen Echo Fire Department in Bethesda.
