Professor Andrea B. Carroll
LSU Law Center
Andi Beauchamp Carroll is the Associate Dean for Student & Academic Affairs and the Donna W. Lee Professor of Family Law at the LSU Law Center. Before joining the LSU Law faculty, Professor Carroll clerked for The Honorable W. Eugene Davis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She subsequently worked as an associate at the Dallas law firm of Baker Botts, L.L.P., handling appellate litigation. In 2003, Professor Carroll returned home to LSU Law, where she has been teaching and writing about family law, community property, and property for nearly two decades. Professor Carroll is the author of more than a dozen books and articles in her field. She has recently been published in the Cambridge University Press and her Tulane article on civil law property was honored as outstanding scholarship at the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Professor Carroll is active in law reform in Louisiana, as a Member of the Council of the Louisiana State Law Institute and the Institute’s Children’s Code, Adult Guardianship, Surrogacy, and Property Committees. She has led successful legislative reforms in the areas of child relocation, spousal support, surrogacy, and community property reimbursement rights. As Reporter of the Law Institute’s Marriage and Persons Committee, Professor Carroll continues to work to improve the law related to marriage and the family.

Professor Elizabeth R. Carter
LSU Law Center
Professor Elizabeth R. Carter is the A.N. Yiannopoulos Professor of Law and the Judge Anthony J. Graphia & Jo Ann Graphia Professor of Law at the Louisiana State University Law Center, where she teaches and writes in the areas of trusts & estates, tax, family law, and comparative law. In addition to her teaching responsibilities at the Law Center, Professor Carter teaches the courses in Federal Gift and Estate Tax and in Estate Planning in the University of Alabama’s LL.M. program in taxation. She is also an Academic Fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.

Professor John M. Church
LSU Law Center
Professor John M. Church is the Joe W. Sanders Alumni Association Professorship and Allen L. Smith, Jr. Professorship Associate Professor of Law at LSU Law Center. He also serves as Director of the Apprenticeship Program at the Law Center. Professor Church teaches Torts, Products Liability, Toxic Torts, Wine Law, Intellectual Property, and Antitrust Law. He has a master’s degree from the University of Illinois and a law degree from the University of Colorado, where he was a Harlo Fellow, the Case Note Editor of the University of Colorado Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. Prior to joining the Law Center faculty in 1991, Professor Church clerked for Judge Robert H. McWilliams of the U.S. Tenth Circuit, and practiced law in Denver. He serves as the Law Center’s representative to the Board of Governors of the Louisiana State Bar Association and is active in local and state bar activities. He is one of the founding board members of the Louisiana Civil Justice Center, an organization dedicated to the provision of legal services to those in need. In 2019, he received the Distinguished Professor Award from the Louisiana Bar Foundation. He is the co-author of Tort Law: The American and Louisiana Perspectives and Louisiana Tort Law. He focuses most of his writing in the area of food and wine regulation, tort law and toxic torts.

Professor Dane S. Ciolino
Loyola University College of Law
Dane S. Ciolino is a law professor and lawyer in New Orleans, Louisiana. He serves as the A. R. Christovich Distinguished Professor of Law at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, where his teaching interests include Professional Responsibility, Evidence, Advocacy, and Criminal Law. He is the editor of the weblog Louisiana Legal Ethics and the book Louisiana Legal Ethics: Standards and Commentary (2021).

Professor Ciolino graduated cum laude from Rhodes College in 1985, and magna cum laude from Tulane Law School in 1988, where he was inducted into Order of the Coif and selected as Editor in Chief of the Tulane Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for the United States District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, and practiced law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City, and Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann LLC, in New Orleans.

Since joining the faculty at Loyola, Professor Ciolino has served as reporter to the Louisiana State Bar Association Ethics 2000 Committee, as chairperson of a Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board Hearing Committee, as chairperson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana Lawyer Disciplinary Committee, as executive administrator and general counsel for the City of New Orleans Ethics Review Board, and as a member of various Louisiana State Bar Association committees (including the Professionalism Committee, the Lawyer & Judicial Codes of Conduct Committee, and the Ethics Advisory Service Committee).

Professor Ciolino engages in a limited law practice and in law-related consulting, principally in the areas of legal ethics, lawyer discipline, judicial discipline, governmental ethics, and federal criminal law. His practice includes handling disciplinary matters before the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, and the Louisiana Judiciary Commission, legal malpractice cases, lawyer disqualification matters, and legal fee disputes. He also consults and serves as an expert witness in the fields of legal ethics, legal fees, and the standards of care and conduct governing lawyers. His engagement agreements are available here: Retention Information and Agreements.

Professor William R. Corbett
LSU Law Center
Professor William R. Corbett is the Frank L. Maraist Professor of Law and the Wex S. Malone Professor of Law at LSU Law Center, where he teaches and writes primarily in the area of Labor and Employment Law, but he also teaches Torts. He is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Professor Corbett served as Interim Dean at LSU Law Center during fiscal year 2015-2016, and served as Vice Chancellor from May 1997 to January 2000. He was honored by the Louisiana Bar Foundation as the 2013 Distinguished Professor. He received his B.A. from Auburn University and his law degree from the University of Alabama, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He also received the M. Leigh Harrison Award presented to those graduating in the top 5 percent. He joined the law faculty at LSU in 1991, after practicing in Birmingham, Alabama with Burr & Forman. Professor Corbett has served as Executive Director of the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel for the last 22 years. Prior to that, he served for several years as Executive Director, and then as faculty advisor, of the Louisiana Judicial College.

Thomas Cortazzo
Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, LLP
Thomas Cortazzo is an administrative partner in the New Orleans office of Lewis Brisbois and is a member of the Complex Business & Commercial Litigation Practice. Mr. Cortazzo, a native of New Orleans, earned his Bachelor of Public Administration Degree, summa cum laude, from Loyola University College of Business, where he attended on academic scholarship. He received his Juris Doctor from Loyola University School of Law in 1987, where he was a member and Comment/Casenote Editor of the Loyola Law Review and a moot court teaching assistant.

Tom has been practicing law for more than 28 years. His practice consists of litigation in courts and administrative tribunals, and his experience ranges from various forms of commercial litigation to insurance matters. Tom’s practice also consists of other forms of dispute resolution such as arbitration and mediation; he is a certified mediator through the American Arbitration Association (AAA). Tom is a member of various professional organizations, including the New Orleans, Louisiana, American and Federal Bar Associations. He has lectured on legal topics to lawyers, business groups and schools, as well as authored legal publications. Tom has been recognized by Super Lawyers (Business Litigation), Best Lawyers in America (Commercial Litigation), and by New Orleans Magazine as one of their “Top Lawyers of New Orleans” (Alternative Dispute Resolution, Commercial Litigation, Construction Law, Insurance Law and Gaming Law).

Tom stays active in the community, serving as a member and past-president of the Loyola University School of Law Alumni Association Board. He was also a member of the Athlos Academy of Jefferson Parish School Board, and is very involved with the Rotary Club of Carrollton (in New Orleans), where he led the Carrollton Rally, a fundraiser and project that placed computer labs in public elementary schools and encouraged their use. He also led in the formation of the Carrollton Rotary Children’s Foundation, a non-profit endowment supporting local children’s charitable causes.

Barry H Grodsky
Taggart Morton
Barry H. Grodsky is a partner in the New Orleans firm of Taggart Morton, L.L.C. and past-President of the Louisiana State Bar Association. He received a BBA degree, with honors, in 1979 from the University of Texas-Austin and his JD degree in 1982 from Tulane University Law School. He was admitted to practice in Louisiana in 1982. Barry served as Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) president-elect in 2017-18 and as secretary and editor of the Louisiana Bar Journal from 2013-15. He represented the First Board District on the LSBA’s Board of Governors and chaired the Committee on the Profession. He coordinates several law school professionalism programs for the Bar. In 2009, Barry accepted the American Bar Association’s Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award on behalf of the Committee on the Profession. He is a member of the Budget Committee and the Bar Governance Committee and serves on the LSBA Fee Arbitration Panel. He also served on the Continuing Legal Education Committee. He received the LSBA’s President’s Award in 2008 and 2010 and the Bar’s Outstanding Service Award in 2013-14. He is an instructor at Tulane University and received the Tulane University Teacher Recognition Award in 1993. He was a Tulane University Faculty Fellow from 2000-02 and received the Distinguished Faculty Award in 2016.

Professor Keith B. Hall
LSU Law Center
Professor Keith B. Hall is the Campanile Charities Professor of Energy Law, and the Director of the Mineral Law Institute at LSU Law Center. He teaches Mineral Rights, Advanced Mineral Law, International Petroleum Transactions, and an Energy Law Seminar which focuses on environmental issues relating to the oil and gas industry. Prior to joining the Law Center’s faculty in 2012, he taught Introduction to Mineral Law as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University School of Law from 2008 until spring 2012, and practiced law for 16 years at Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann LLC in New Orleans. His publications have focused on oil and gas leases, pooling and unitization, hydraulic fracturing, induced seismicity, and the management of produced water. He is co-author of one of the two national casebooks on oil and gas law and also is co-author of a book on the legal issues relating to hydraulic fracturing. He is a frequent speaker at national and international oil and gas, energy, and environmental law conferences, and is a contributing co-author to the forthcoming new edition of the leading textbook on international petroleum transactions. In addition to teaching at LSU, he has taught energy law classes as a visiting professor at Baku State University in Azerbaijan and at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and as an adjunct professor at Loyola University College of Law. Professor Hall is a member of the Board of Editors for the Oil & Gas Reporter, the Board of Trustees for the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Energy Law, and the Board of Trustees for the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation. He is a former Chair of the Louisiana State Bar Association's Environmental Law Section and former Chair of the Oil & Gas Committee of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He serves on the Louisiana Law Institute’s Water Law Committee and is a registered professional engineer. He co-authors “Recent Developments: Mineral Law” for the bimonthly Louisiana Bar Journal. Professor Hall received his law degree, summa cum laude, from Loyola University College of Law, where he served as Managing Editor of the Loyola Law Review. He graduated from Louisiana State University with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering.

Professor Melissa T. Lonegrass
LSU Law Center
Professor Melissa Lonegrass is the Harriett S. Daggett-Frances Leggio Landry Professor of Law, Bernard Keith Vetter Professor of Civil Law Studies, and Wedon T. Smith Professor in Civil Law. Professor Lonegrass earned her J.D. from Tulane Law School, where she graduated first in her class. Before joining the LSU Law faculty in 2008, Professor Lonegrass worked as an associate at the New Orleans firm of Irwin Fritchie Urquhart & Moore LLC, specializing in civil defense, with an emphasis on pharmaceutical and medical device defense. Professor Lonegrass has taught numerous civil law courses at the Law Center, including Western Legal Traditions, Obligations, Sales and Real Estate, Security Devices, and Successions, Donations & Trusts. Her scholarship focuses on Louisiana civil law, comparative legal methodology, landlord-tenant law, and contract law. She recently co-authored a textbook on Louisiana’s law of sale and lease, and has published articles in the Tulane Law Review, the Louisiana Law Review, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review, and the Loyola Chicago Law Journal. From 2016-2018, Professor Lonegrass was appointed as a Scholar-in-Residence of the Louisiana Bar Foundation, and in 2019, she was elected as an Academic Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Counsel. Professor Lonegrass is active in law reform in Louisiana, serving as a member of the Council of the Louisiana State Law Institute, as the reporter of the Institute’s Landlord-Tenant Committee and the Notaries Committee, and as a member of many other committees, including the Committee on Successions and Donations.

Michael H. Rubin
McGlinchey Stafford
Mike Rubin is a veteran appellate lawyer who has handled hundreds of appeals in state and federal courts, including before the U.S. Fifth, Seventh, and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeal, on a wide variety of issues affecting the entire Gulf region. As a trial litigator, Mike has handled ground-breaking cases in the areas of finance and secured lending and major multimillion-dollar commercial transactions, as well as trials of national importance concerning federal voting rights, bankruptcy, environmental law, and constitutional issues. Mike served as an adjunct professor at the LSU, Southern, and Tulane law schools for 40 years teaching courses in security devices and ethics. He is a prolific writer; his numerous legal publications on real estate, finance, and ethics have been cited as authoritative in state and federal courts around the country and have been used in law schools across the nation. A nationally known speaker and humorist who has given over 500 major presentations throughout the USA as well as in Canada and England, Mike also is an author of legal thrillers that have won national awards and have been translated and sold internationally.

Professor J. Randall Trahan
LSU Law Center
Professor J. Randall Trahan is the Louis B. Porterie Professor of Law and the Saul Litvinoff Distinguished Professor of Law at LSU Law Center. Professor Trahan is a civil law specialist and presently teaches Sales & Real Estate, Security Devices, Civil Law Property, and Successions & Donations. He has also taught Family Law, Obligations, Matrimonial Regimes, Legal Traditions & Systems, and Western Legal Traditions, and is co-author, along with Professor Ken Murchison, of Western Legal Traditions & Systems: Louisiana Impact. He has written a new book entitled: Louisiana Law of Property: A Précis, published by LexisNexis. Professor Trahan received his B.A. in Political Science from LSU in 1982, and his law degree in 1989, with high honors, from LSU Law Center where he was Articles Editor of Louisiana Law Review and was inducted into The Order of the Coif. Before joining the Law Center faculty in 1995, Professor Trahan served as law clerk to the late Judge Alvin B. Rubin in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for one year and then practiced law with the firm of Phelps Dunbar in Baton Rouge for five years. He serves as Reporter for three committees of the Louisiana State Law Institute: the Adult Guardianship Committee, the Birth Certificate Committee, and the newly established Legion Beyond Moiety Committee.