June 16, 2021

Jeannie P. Dahnk Receives the Virginia State Bar Leadership in Education Award

Jeannie Dahnk, the 2003-04 president of the Virginia State Bar, and the second woman to hold the position, has been named the recipient of the William R. Rakes Leadership in Education Award from the VSB Section on the Education of Lawyers in Virginia.

In her role as VSB president, Dahnk focused on the quality of faculty and curriculum of the Carrico Professionalism Course, required of all newly licensed attorneys. She served on the faculty and as chair of the Carrico Professionalism Course and has taught professionalism at each of Virginia's law schools. Dahnk has also championed Virginia CLE, and helped ensure its success as a premier educational institution.

In her extensive career, Dahnk has found numerous ways to put her love of teaching to use. She helped create and teach Law School for Legislators, a program for the Virginia General Assembly. She also co-wrote and routinely teaches The Devil Wore Green, an introduction to trust accounting offered around the Commonwealth. She served as an editor for the 2019 Manual for Commissioners of Accounts and edited the current edition of Lawyers and Other People's Money. She currently chairs the Supreme Court's Standing Committee on Commissioners of Accounts and serves on the Board of Directors of the Virginia Conference of Commissioners of Accounts, of which she is a former president.

Dahnk co-created George Washington and the Rules of Civility — a destination seminar — with Supreme Court of Virginia Justice Steve McCullough. She created and helped teach Autism and the Law, a showcase seminar at the VSB Annual Meeting. She has taught trial techniques to the Office of Bar Counsel and fiduciary responsibility and ethics to Commissioners of Accounts, and she is a regular lecturer at the Bar’s First Day in Practice Seminar.

In his letter nominating Dahnk, Irving M. Blank of Blank & Marcus LLP wrote, “Jeannie has devoted her professional life to developing and implementing innovative concepts to improve and enhance the state of legal education, as well as enhancing relationships and professionalism among members of the bench and bar of the legal profession in Virginia.”

Dahnk attended George Washington University, where she was an All-American diver and a member of the GWU Athletic Hall of Fame, before graduating from William & Mary Law School. While in law school she coached the William & Mary women’s diving team. She has practiced civil litigation in many Virginia courts for 34 years and serves as Commissioner of Accounts for Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. She is chair of the board of Legal Aid Works and has served as a board member and counsel to the Fredericksburg SPCA. She has taught yoga and aerobics.  She learned and has taught ABA therapy for autistic children. 

Dahnk lives in Fredericksburg with her husband, the Hon. William E. Glover, and three golden retrievers.  Her sons Sam and Max are both beginning law school this fall. Because she believes that learning and teaching go hand in hand, she is currently taking welding lessons.

The award, which is underwritten by Gentry Locke, will be presented June 17 at the Virginia State Bar Annual Meeting in Virginia Beach.