#uvalawteach

UVA Law professor Leslie Kendrick, who is teaching Torts, Constitutional Law II: Speech and Press, and First Amendment Theory this year, joined the faculty in 2008, just two years after she graduated from the school. Before law school, she received her master's and doctorate in English literature at the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. After law school she clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III '72 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Where are you from originally? I’m from East Point, Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The Law School does an Alternative Spring Break to Prestonsburg, Kentucky, 6 miles from where I grew up. I highly recommend it to everyone, in part because you have a high probability of running into my dad.

What's the best way for a student to develop professional relationships/increase their number of professional references while in law school? One of the best relationships students can develop is with the great people at Career Services. They are wonderful at advising students on developing relationships according to their particular needs and interests. I would trust their advice much more than my own.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? When I was a kid, I wanted to be a teacher. I feel very lucky!

What have you learned from a student that still sticks with you? Students have all sorts of personal experiences that can bear on class, particularly something like torts or property. They've worked at ski resorts, driven trucks, designed things as engineers, used chainsaws and power tools, and had crazy medical experiences. They've had bad landlords, or bad co-tenants, or lease conflicts. These are experiences that influence their intuitions, and in class we try to make these intuitions into arguments. They already know a great deal that is useful for that enterprise.

What one class should every law student take? Torts. It's the ultimate common law class. Luckily everyone has to take it.

What's your favorite spot in Charlottesville? I love a lot of places in Charlottesville. Before I started teaching here, I lived here as a law student and as a judicial clerk. Micah [Schwartzman] and I got married here, and now we’re here with three small kids. The great thing about this area is that it has something for everybody, at every stage in life. But one thing I never noticed before having kids is how great the Charlottesville parks system is. I drove right by parks that we now spend a lot of time in. One of our favorites is Riverview Park. You can walk or ride your bike, you can walk your dogs, and it’s all along the river. It’s very pretty. It was sitting there all the time I was a student, and I didn’t know.

Professor George Yin grew up in New York City on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He earned his J.D. from George Washington University Law School, and later joined the UVA Law faculty in 1994, after visiting from the University of Florida. He has also been a visiting professor at New York University, University of Pennsylvania and Brigham Young University.

From 2003-05, he served as chief of staff of the U.S. Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation, one of the most influential tax positions in the country. Before beginning his law school teaching career, Yin clerked for a federal court, practiced law in Washington, D.C., and then served as tax counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, among other influential positions.

Why did you want to become a lawyer? Why did you choose to focus on your area(s) of law? After college, I worked at a job that exposed me to a level of poverty in this country that I could not have imagined. Becoming a lawyer seemed like the right way to figure out how to begin to address that problem.

In my second year of law school, I took introductory tax because everyone else was doing it. I soon learned that my professor regularly flunked a third of the class. (Grades were posted then, so this information was readily available.) He also frightened me to death in class; he would sometimes throw chalk at students who did not respond well or were unprepared. I worked day and night preparing for that class and ended up doing very well. Rather than simply thinking, “hard work pays off,” I came away with the impression that I had a special disposition for tax. Whether I was right or not, it has ended up being a good fit.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a baseball player. But I’ve worn glasses since I was five or six, and my father pointed out that there were no ballplayers wearing glasses. I didn’t have the smarts (or nerve) to question his judgment.

What have you learned from a student that still sticks with you? I didn’t do very well in my first law teaching experience. My only prior teaching experience had been working with first- and second-graders — a much different task. I was therefore anxious to review my teacher evaluations to see what I could learn. One of my first evaluations said simply: “worst professor I have ever had.” Needless to say, I didn’t feel great when I read that one. The fact that the student misspelled the word, “professor” (two “f”s and one “s”) gave me a little bit of solace. Another evaluation was also short and very critical, and said: “I really don’t like him because he makes us think.” I felt a little better when I read that one.

Which class should every law student take? Income tax, of course. It touches everything a lawyer might do. And it prepares every student to be a better citizen and a more informed future leader. We definitely need more of both.

What's your favorite spot in Charlottesville, and why? Aside from my home, probably O-Hill. It’s so peaceful there, and the inclines are steep enough to provide a little buzz, whether biking, running or just walking. 

Professor J. Gordon Hylton, a legal historian  and UVA Law alumnus, teaches courses on the history of African-American lawyers, trusts and estates, professional responsibility and property. He joined the Law School full-time in 2015, but had been a visiting professor for more than a decade previous. His current research interests focus on the history of the legal profession, the history of civil rights and the legal history of American sports.

What is your favorite memory of law school?   It's not necessarily my favorite memory, but my clearest memory is of my first law school class. The movie, "The Paper Chase," had come out during my senior year of college and like everyone who started law school that year, I was aware of it. The first class in the movie is Contracts. My first class was Contracts. The casebook in the movie was Fuller & Eisenberg. That was our casebook. The professor in the class made no effort to explain what the class would be about. Neither did my professor. The first case to be discussed was Hawkins v. McGee. Our first case was Hawkins v. McGee. It all suddenly seemed like some practical joke, at my expense. In the movie, Hart, the protagonist, is called upon; he is unprepared; and he ends up throwing up in the men's room after class. I was unprepared, but fortunately was not called upon. After that, it got better.

Who is your hero?  My heroes are the seven professors who were here while I was in law school and who are still teaching and who likely will outlast me. (Dick Howard, Tom White, Ted White, John Norton Moore, Richard Bonnie, John Jeffries, and George Rutherglen.)

What things do you like the most about being a professor? I like the interchanges with students in class, and I like having the freedom to pursue topics that interest me.

What's your favorite teaching/classroom moment?

There is nothing like teaching first-year students in their first semester of law school. Never again will you have students who will all show up every day and will be well-prepared on top of that. And are not yet jaded.

What's your favorite spot in Charlottesville, and why?   The softball field across from the Law School. I spent much of my free time in law school playing pickup games there, and then during my final year Fred Vogel and I organized the North Grounds Softball League. Forty years later, the games are still going on.

Professor Cynthia Nicoletti, a legal historian, began teaching at the Law School in 2014. A three-time University of Virginia graduate, Nicoletti is also a recipient of the American Society for Legal History's William Nelson Cromwell Prize for best dissertation in legal history. She is working on a book, "The Treason Trial of Jefferson Davis: Secession in the Aftermath of the American Civil War."

Where are you from originally? New York City (Manhattan).