Linda Elrod, J.D. is the Richard S. Righter Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita and former Director of the Children and Family Law Center at Washburn University School of Law. She retired after 50 years teaching in June, 2024. In May 2025, she became the 18th recipient and the first woman to be awarded the Kansas Supreme Court Justice Award for her contributions to the improvement of the law through her teaching, research and writing.

She was the first chair of the Family Law Section of the Kansas Bar Association in 1984 and first woman president of the Topeka Bar Association in 1986. She served on the Kansas Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Child Support for 32 years. She wrote the Kansas Family Law Handbook in 1983 which became part of the Thomson Reuters practice series in 1999; wrote Child Custody Practice and Procedure, a national treatise, in 1994 which is annually updated and published by Thomson Reuters; and co-authored a family law textbook (West) that has been used in 35 law schools. In 2025, she published a book, Relocation: From File to Trial, about post separation parental attempts to move with children for the ABA Family Law Section.

Professor Elrod served as Editor-in-Chief of the Family Law Quarterly for 24 years (1992-2016); and chaired the committee that drafted the 1996 ABA Standards for Lawyers Representing Children in Abuse and Neglect Cases. She has been a member of the Uniform Law Commission’s Joint Editorial Board for Uniform Family Law since its creation in 1999, becoming its Reporter in 2016. She was the Reporter for the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (now in 23 states) and the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act. She has written numerous articles in state, national and international publications and is a frequent CLE presenter on children’s issues. She has presented at three World Congresses and most International Society of Family Law conferences since 1994. She is a child advocate who has argued for hearing children’s voices for 50 years.