Law Profs Are People Too Renee Nicole Allen

Caitlin “Cat” Moon teaches in the Program on Law and Innovation (PoLI) at Vanderbilt Law School, where she also serves as the Director of Innovation Design and directs the PoLI Institute (innovatethelaw.com), Vanderbilt Law’s innovation-focused executive education platform. Cat co-founded PoLI’s Summit on Law and Innovation (SoLI), which brings together experts across legal, technology, and other disciplines in collaborative legal innovation projects. She currently teaches Legal Problem Solving, a course in human-centered design for law, as well as Law as a Business, Legal Operations, Leading in Law, and Data in Law Practice. Cat also contributes to the Medical Innovators Development Program and is on the faculty of Radiological Sciences at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, where she brings cross-disciplinary experience to innovation across medicine and the law. 

Cat’s research focuses on how we might use the tools of innovation and human-centered design to improve and expand access to legal services and the law generally. She also studies the professional formation of lawyers in the 21st century from a holistic perspective. Cat is a co-creator of the Delta Model, a 21st-century framework for lawyer competency, and a co-founder, with Professor Alyson Carrel, of Design Your Delta, a playbook for holistic professional development grounded in human-centered design principles and methods.

Benjamin Edwards joined the faculty of the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2017. He researches and writes about business and securities law, corporate governance, arbitration, and consumer protection. Prior to teaching, Professor Edwards practiced as a securities litigator in the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. At Skadden, he represented clients in complex civil litigation, including securities class actions arising out of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and litigation arising out of the 2008 financial crisis.

His writing has appeared in the Northwestern University Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, University of California Davis Law Review, Georgia State Law Review, William & Mary Law Review Online, Virginia Law and Business Review, Michigan Business and Entrepreneurial Law Review, Journal of Business and Securities Law, Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, InvestmentNews, Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Hill, The Washington Post, BloombergView, Oxford Business Law Blog, and Columbia Blue Sky Blog. He also writes regularly for the Business Law Professor blog.

Professor Edwards earned his law degree from Columbia Law School and clerked for Judge Samuel H. Mays, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.

Michelle Jacobs is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Florida College of Law, and was the Racial Justice Term Professor for the 2020-2021 academic year. She taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, White Collar Crime, International Criminal Law and Critical Race Theory. Her scholarship focuses on access to justice for communities marginalized in and by the law. In particular, she concentrates on Black women’s experience with violence perpetrated by the state. Her work highlights the plight of Black women criminalized by the state for daring to protect their own lives against intimate partner violence, as well as the invisibility of Black women’s struggle against all forms of police violence. She is a frequent media commentator on racial bias in the criminal justice system, and on police violence, particularly as it relates to police murders and sexual assaults of Black women and girls. In addition, she gives frequent interviews to the press in on Critical Race Theory.

Taunya Lovell Banks is the Professor Emerita and former Jacob A. France Professor of Equality Jurisprudence at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. As a leading expert in antidiscrimination law and critical race theory, she writes about race and identity, the impact of skin tone discrimination (colorism), and the intersection of race, gender and class in law.

Ruth Gordon is a professor of law at Villanova Law School. Her scholarship focuses on International Law generally, and in particular the Third World encounter with international law. Her forthcoming book, Development Disrupted: The Global South in the 21st Century, will be out in July.

Linda Sheryl Greene is Dean and MSU Foundation Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and an elected life member of The American Law Institute. Prior to her career in academia, she was a civil rights and constitutional law attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney who specialized in civil rights and constitutional law and a Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She was the Chair of the 1990 Wisconsin Conference on Critical Race Theory, President of the Society of American Law Teachers, the founder of the People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference movement, and Vice Chair of the Counsel on Legal Educational Opportunity. Her recent scholarship reflects the breadth of her experience focusing on Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Legislation, Civil Rights, and Sports Law.

Cheryl L. Wade is the Harold F. McNiece Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law. She teaches Issues of Race, Gender and Law, Business Organizations, Corporate Governance and Accountability, and Race and Business.  Her book, "Predatory Lending and The Destruction of the African American Dream” (coauthored with Dr. Janis Sarra) was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2020. Professor Wade is a member of the American Law Institute, a national organization of prominent judges, lawyers and academics who work to clarify, modernize and reform the law.

Mike Simons is the John V. Brennan Professor of Law & Ethics at St. John’s University School of law, where he has served as dean since 2009. He teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, Sentencing, and Introduction to Law. His scholarship, which is informed by his experience as a criminal defense lawyer and prosecutor, has focused on sentencing, prosecutorial decision-making, and punishment theory.

Ekow N. Yankah is a Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law in New York City. He teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, jurisprudence, policing and race, and torts. He is a celebrated teacher, scholar, and a voting rights and election law expert. In 2020, he was awarded the Guardian of Democracy Award by the New York Democratic Lawyers Council. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Columbia Law School, and Oxford University.

OJ is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of Academic Excellence at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He’s a native of South Texas and is the first and only Hispanic to hold a full-time faculty position at the law school. As Director of Academic Excellence, OJ oversees all aspects of academic success programming for UNC students. He teaches for-credit bar preparation courses, as well as courses focused on client counseling and negotiation. OJ has a Master’s degree in Counseling, and he previously taught in UNC’s first year legal research and writing program for six years.