Lori Johnson Appointed Inaugural Terry Pollman Professor of Law
The William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV has appointed Professor Lori Johnson as the inaugural Terry Pollman Professor of Law. This new professorship was established in honor of Terry Pollman, a founding faculty member of the Boyd School of Law and one of the foremost faculty members in the national legal writing community.
The professorship will be a multiple-year appointment that will rotate among Boyd’s legal writing faculty. It recognizes the strength of the Boyd School of Law’s Lawyering Process faculty and their dedication to the program.
In making the announcement, Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law, Leah Chan Grinvald, said, "I am so pleased to be able to recognize Professor Pollman's contributions to Boyd Law and to the legal writing field as an academic discipline. This position recognizes the importance of legal writing at Boyd Law, but also in the legal academy."
Terry Pollman served as President of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) and held various leadership roles in the Legal Writing Institute (LWI). She was the recipient of many prestigious awards, including: the 2019 ALWD/LWI Thomas Blackwell Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Legal Writing; the AALS Award for Outstanding Service to the Discipline from the Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research; the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference Annual Award; and the UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award. She also served as a Managing Editor of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute and Co-founder of the West Coast Rhetoric Workshop. Before coming to the Boyd School of Law, Professor Pollman directed legal writing programs at the University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign and Stetson University College of Law.
According to Professor Mary Beth Beazley, "most legal writing faculty have benefited directly or indirectly thanks to Terry Pollman’s scholarship and leadership in the early days of modern legal writing teaching. Her leadership continued as she became a founding faculty member at Boyd Law, eventually developing an autonomous program of tenured and tenure track legal writing faculty.”
"This named professorship recognizes the tremendous and important role that Terry Pollman played in the advancement of the legal writing discipline nationally and at Boyd,” said Professor Johnson of her new appointment. “I hope to use the benefits of this appointment to enhance our Lawyering Process Program and to reflect Terry's intellect and dedication to the profession.”
Lori Johnson is an incoming member of the Board of Directors for the Legal Writing Institute. She previously served on the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research Executive Committee in numerous capacities including Chair (2022) and Immediate Past Chair (2023). Professor Johnson has also served on the Editorial Board for Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. In 2023, she was awarded the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference Annual Award and Boyd Law’s Student Bar Association Professor of the Year Award.
"Lori Johnson is the perfect inaugural recipient of the Terry Pollman Professor of Law because of her tireless work on behalf of the discipline both nationally and within UNLV. We're so proud of Lori and all her accomplishments and she more than merits this award," said legal writing faculty colleague and E.L. Cord Professor of Law Kathy Stanchi.
The Lawyering Process Program at the William S. Boyd School of Law consistently ranks in the top of the U.S. News and World Report’s legal writing specialty rankings. As a national leader in legal writing, the Lawyering Process faculty at the Boyd School of Law consistently hosts legal writing conferences including the upcoming Legal Writing Professors of Color Scholarship Workshop in December 2024.
