Chris Schandevel, Esq.
Alliance Defending Freedom https://adflegal.org/biography/chris-schandevel
About The Lecturer
Chris Schandevel serves as senior counsel on Alliance Defending Freedom’s Appellate Advocacy Team. In that role, he represents ADF clients of all stripes at the appellate level, preserving lower-court victories and seeking to overturn unjust results.
ADF is the world's largest legal organization protecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, marriage and family, and parental rights. Among other clients, Schandevel has represented the Iowa Governor, a national organization of pediatricians, a faith-based pregnancy resource center, a Christian photographer, a college student and her student group, a former Planned Parenthood clinic manager, female track-and-field athletes, and a high-school French teacher.
Schandevel was on the team of attorneys who successfully represented the Thomas More Law Center in the U.S. Supreme Court in Thomas More Law Center v. Bonta. And he regularly represents clients in friend-of-the-court briefs filed in state and federal appellate courts and in the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Fall 2022, Schandevel published an article on best practices for writing amicus briefs in the American Bar Association’s Appellate Issues publication titled, “Meeting Their Needs: How to Be the Best Possible Friend of the Court, the Party you’re Supporting, and the Clients you Represent.”
Before joining ADF, Schandevel served as an assistant attorney general in the Criminal Appeals Section at the Virginia Office of the Attorney General. During his five years there, Schandevel briefed and argued 14 appeals in the Virginia Supreme Court and more than 60 appeals in the Virginia Court of Appeals.
Before his time at the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, Schandevel clerked for the Honorable Stephen R. McCullough on the Virginia Court of Appeals.
Schandevel earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2012, and his B.A. in Social Work from Harding University in 2009.
Practice Area(s)
Litigation
Criminal Law
Education
University of Virginia School of Law, J.D.
Harding University, B.A. Social Work
