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 Beatrice Summer Chandler
LSU Law Center
Professor Chandler joined the Law Center faculty in 2021. Prior to joining the Law Center faculty, she served as a visiting assistant professor at Southern University Law Center. She also served as an assistant professor at Concordia University School of Law. Prior to joining Concordia University School of Law, she was as a visiting assistant professor at the Georgia State University College of Law. She brings a wealth of practice experience to her teaching. Prior to joining the academy, Professor Chandler practiced for fifteen years in large national and international law firms, focusing her practice on business bankruptcy, commercial real estate related litigation and transactions, and other business transactions and disputes.

Professor Chandler’s research interests are in the areas of bankruptcy and legal ethics. She teaches business and commercial law courses. Professor Chandler is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina – Asheville.

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 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.

Judge Daniel J. Ellender
Court of Appeal, Second Circuit State of Louisiana
Judge Danny Ellender serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeal. Prior to beginning his term in January of 2023, Judge Ellender served for 14 years as a District Judge on the Fourth Judicial District Court for Morehouse and Ouachita parishes.
Following graduation from LSU Law School, Judge Ellender began his legal career in Shreveport as a law clerk for the Second Circuit, both on central staff and then for Judge, now retired Justice, Jeff Victory. Judge Ellender and his wife Amy, who also clerked for Justice Victory, then opened their own law firm together in northeast Louisiana, where he practiced for 15 years until his election to the district court bench. In addition to a general civil law practice, Judge Ellender also worked as an assistant district attorney and, before that, as a federal indigent defender.
A graduate of the Louisiana Judicial Leadership Institute, Judge Ellender has been active on various state-wide boards for the administration of justice, including serving on the Louisiana State Law Institute, the Judicial Council of the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Supreme Court’s Committee on Judicial Ethics, the Board of Governors for Louisiana’s Judicial College and the Louisiana District Judges Association Executive Committee.
Judge Ellender and his wife Amy are the proud parents of six children and two grandchildren. They are active members of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Morehouse Parish.

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.

Professor Tracy L. M. Norton
LSU Law Center
Tracy L. M. Norton joined the LSU Law faculty in 2022 and is the Erick Vincent Anderson Professor of Professional Practice. Prof. Norton is an accomplished legal educator and scholar whose significant contributions to the field of legal communication and pedagogy include published works and influential presentations on a variety of pressing issues such as the application of artificial intelligence in law practice and legal education; the transition to online teaching before, during, and after the pandemic; and the challenges and opportunities presented by generational shifts in the legal profession. She began introducing technology into the law school classroom in 1998 with her pioneering self-paced legal citation tool, the Interactive Citation Workstation, housed on Lexis+. Through her scholarly work and advocacy for effective teaching strategies over the past 27 years, Prof. Norton has left an indelible mark on the landscape of legal education – both nationally and internationally -- with her forward-thinking approach to pedagogy and law practice. She has taught at Touro University School of Law in New York, South Texas College of Law in Houston, and Texas Tech University School of Law in Lubbock. She currently researches and writes about using generative artificial intelligence within the bounds of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

Clare Roubion
Louisiana Legal Ethics, LLC
Clare Roubion is a 2014 graduate of the LSU Law Center. Clare Roubion is engaged in a limited law practice and in law-related consulting, principally in the areas of legal ethics, lawyer discipline, and judicial discipline. Her 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 motions and lawyer fee disputes.

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 475 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.

Judge Alvin R. Sharp
Judge
Fourth Judicial District Court
http://www.4jdc.com
The Honorable Alvin R. Sharp currently serves as a judge for Louisiana's 4th Judicial District Court, which serves Ouachita and Morehouse Parishes.
Sharp graduated from kindergarten in 1971 as class valedictorian. He finished Ouachita Parish High School in 1982 as a member of the National Honor Society.
He received his bachelor’s degree (with Latin Honors) from Southern University A & M College in 1986.
In 1989, Judge Sharp earned his Juris Doctor from the Southern University Law Center with several distinctions - including the cum laude designation and national moot court team leader.
In 1990, Judge Sharp earned a masters in law from Emory University where he was a Gambrel Hall Merit Scholar and the author of an Evidence manual that was later used as a “teaching tool” at the Emory School of Law.

Judge Sharp is a former editor-in-chief of law review and the editor in chief of several legal newsletters. He has written many pieces relating to trial techniques, evidence, civil procedure, family law, and litigation in general. He has authored several textbooks which are used in major universities in Louisiana and Georgia.
He is a former federal judicial law clerk, a past litigator for the Indigent Defender Board, a past Monroe City Prosecutor, past Monroe City Attorney, past general counsel for the Monroe City School Board, and a past member of Sharp & Sharp. Attorneys at Law.
Judge Sharp has served the judiciary in many ways. He is the originator of Night Court in Monroe City Court and at the 4th Judicial District Court.
He has served as chief judge in 2007 and 2008 where he was instrumental in making many “firsts” for the court during his tenure - including the 3945 Compliance Sheet and the first en banc judges meeting for Morehouse Parish.

Additionally, he is a former bar exam grader, a twelve-year veteran university professor of civil litigation, and a developer of educational programs for students interested in the legal field.
He has written several novels and will soon publish a three-part work on his late father, attorney James Sharp, Jr., and published "The Letter of the Law," a weekly news column in The Monroe Dispatch.
Judge Sharp is currently the pastor of Zion Traveler Baptist Church in Monroe. He has written several spiritual plays and conducted over 500 Christian Learning Education lectures. He has chaired numerous committees at his church.

He is the father of one and has written several children’s books dedicated to his son - Peyton. He is the founder of his own foundation dedicated to advancing ten basic principles for children.
Judge Sharp is a 32nd degree Mason and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
In his spare time, he likes to read about the Rottweiler and the Bernese Mountain dog. One day, he hopes to be a proud owner of both. He is currently raising a 1-year-old shih tzu named Chewie.

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.