Dan Filler studies the effects of social anxiety on the development of criminal law. He is an expert on sex offender community notification, the death penalty and juvenile justice law. 

Before joining the inaugural faculty, Dean Filler was a professor of law at the University of Alabama School of Law, where he created the school's Capital Defense Clinic.

The Pennsylvania Joint State Government on Capital Punishment appointed him to the Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment in 2012.  He has served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law and Humanities and chaired an American Bar Association team that assessed the fairness and accuracy of Alabama’s death-penalty system. The U.S. Supreme Court cited the report that resulted from that assessment in a 2012 ruling that favored a death-row inmate in Alabama.

Dean Filler earned his JD from New York University School of Law after serving as an editor for the New York University Law Review and winning the Orison S. Marden Moot Court Competition.

He clerked for Judge J. Dickson Phillips Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit before becoming assistant public defender for the Defender Association of Philadelphia and then staff attorney for the Bronx Defenders. He also practiced with the New York firm, Debevoise & Plimpton.