June 25, 2025 Training Event

Barton F. Stichman is Special Counsel to NVLSP focusing on litigation activities. In July 2021, he stepped down as Executive Director of NVLSP, which he co-founded in 1981. After earning law degrees from New York University School of Law (J.D. 1974) and Georgetown University Law Center (LLM 1975), he has devoted his entire professional legal career to helping veterans and their families get the federal veterans benefits to which they are entitled.

For the last four decades, Mr. Stichman has represented veterans and their families before U.S. District Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the Department of Veterans Affairs, military department discharge review boards and boards for correction of military records. His litigation efforts have resulted in payment of more than $5.4 billion dollars in disability and healthcare benefits to hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans and their families.

A major part of NVLSP’s mission is to increase the pool of effective advocates available to represent veterans and their family members by training lawyers and non-lawyers and providing educational publications to them in veterans benefits law. Over his career, Mr. Stichman has trained thousands of non-lawyer accredited veterans service officers, lawyers, and law students in this area of law.

Mr. Stichman is a co-author/editor of The Veterans Benefits Manual, NVLSP’s 2,400-page treatise on veterans benefits law that is published annually by Lexis Law Publishing and has been distributed to thousands of veterans service officers and lawyers. The Veterans Benefits Manual has been recognized as legal authority in numerous court cases. He is also a co-author of The Rights of Military Personnel, and NVLSP’s Military Discharge Upgrade Manual and has written articles on veterans benefits law appearing in the Administrative Law Review, The American University Law Review, The Federal Bar News and Journal, Clearinghouse Review, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and the Legal Times.

Mr. Stichman is a member of the Judicial Advisory Committee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and is a past president of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims Bar Association.

Mr. Richard V. Spataro is the Director of Training and Publications for NVLSP. Mr. Spataro joined NVLSP as a law clerk in 2004 and accepted a position as a staff attorney upon his graduation from law school in 2005. He was promoted to the position of senior staff attorney in 2013. He has represented hundreds of veterans before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and has also represented veterans before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, and VA Regional Offices. He trains advocates in veterans law and mentors attorneys who participate in NVLSP’s Lawyers Serving Warriors^®Program and the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program. From November 2010 to August 2015, he was also the managing attorney of NVLSP’s Nehmer Lawsuit Division. During that time, he and his team of attorneys assisted thousands of veterans and their survivors obtain retroactive VA benefits for herbicide-related disabilities under the court orders in the class action Nehmer v. U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

Before embarking on his legal career, Mr. Spataro served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy. He earned his commission through the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps program at Duke University. He spent four years on active duty, serving first as the Auxiliaries Officer of the USS Vella Gulf and then as the Navigator of the USS Mount Whitney.

Mr. Spataro is a member of the Virginia and the District of Columbia Bars. From 2010 to 2013, he served as a Vice Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association.

Mr. Spataro originally hails from Malone, New York. He is a graduate of Duke University (B.A., History, 1998) and American University, Washington College of Law (J.D., cum laude, 2005).

Ms. Burbank is Director of Litigation at NVLSP. In this role, Ms. Burbank supervises all individual lawsuits brought by NVLSP in U.S. district courts, Article III courts of appeals, and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, as well as all of NVLSP’s class actions and other strategic litigation.

Before joining NVLSP, Ms. Burbank co-taught Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services clinic as a Robert M. Cover Clinical Teaching Fellow. During her tenure at Yale, Ms. Burbank supervised advocacy on behalf of veterans and veterans’ organizations at all levels of administrative and judicial review as well as class actions and impact litigation. Prior to that, Ms. Burbank worked for nearly eight years as a litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she worked on complex commercial litigation at both the trial and appellate levels. Ms. Burbank’s work earned her several accolades including a Civil Division Special Commendation Award.

Ms. Burbank is a graduate of the University of Chicago (A. B., with honors) and Harvard Law School (J.D., cum laude), and clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She has written scholarly work on a variety of topics, including veterans law, disability rights, voting rights, and illegal exactions. She is an active member in good standing of the Connecticut and North Carolina State Bars, and a VA-accredited attorney. She is admitted to practice before several federal courts, including the Federal Circuit, Court of Federal Claims and the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

Ms. Alexis Marie Ivory is a senior staff attorney with NVLSP. She splits her time between developing training programs and conducting training sessions for veterans service officers and representing veterans and their survivors before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. She is admitted to practice before the U.S Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and is a member of the Maryland State bar.

Prior to joining NVLSP, Ms. Ivory was counsel at The Board of Veterans’ Appeals, Department of Veterans Affairs. During her tenure, Ms. Ivory was the VA representative at military bases in Japan and taught the VA portion of the Transition Assistance Program.

Ms. Ivory is from New York and is a graduate of The Catholic University of America (B.S. 2002), and The Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America (J.D. 2005).

Elizabeth Tarloski is a staff attorney with NVLSP. She represents veterans before the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and U.S. Court of Veterans Claims and provides training to veterans advocates.

Before joining NVLSP, Ms. Tarloski was staff attorney at the Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania Veterans Advocacy Project. She was also a Visiting Professor at the William and Mary Law School Lewis B. Puller Jr. Veterans Benefits Clinic where she developed and taught the first law school clinic class nationwide to focus exclusively on Veterans Benefits cases specific to Military Sexual Trauma and helped to create and teach the online certificate course ‘Psychological Challenges and Resulting Legal Issues for Service Members and Veterans.’ She also served on the Supreme Court of Virginia – Special Committee on Best Practices for Veterans’ Dockets and worked with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Veterans’ Initiative Program.

Ms. Tarloski is a graduate of the University of San Diego (B.A.), the London School of Economics and Political Science (M.S.) and Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law (J.D.). She is a member of the Pennsylvania State Bar and is admitted to practice before the U.S Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.