Susan Ervin, a former attorney with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has joined the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell as a partner in the firm's Washington DC office.

Ervin spent 15 years as an attorney for the CFTC, the last 10 of which she served in a senior capacity as deputy director and chief counsel of the CFTC's Division of Trading and Markets. In that capacity, Ervin was responsible for the legal aspects of the CFTC's regulatory programs for exchanges, clearing organizations, futures commission merchants, commodity pool operators, commodity trading advisors and other intermediaries.

She left the CFTC at the end of 1997 to re-enter private practice, where she also advised on the derivatives activities of investment companies. In 2009, she returned to the public sector as an attorney fellow/senior adviser at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where she helped develop regulatory approaches to the derivatives markets.