Online Master of Legal Studies Faculty

Kelly Bahiraei is the Assistant Dean for Legal Studies at Vanderbilt Law School. At VLS, Kelly provides strategic leadership and oversight for three unique non-J.D. programs within the Law School: the one-year Master of Laws (LL.M.) residential program, the online Master of Legal Studies (MLS), and the undergraduate Legal Studies minor. Kelly holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Policy from Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, an M.L.A.S. from Vanderbilt University, and a B.A. from Middle Tennessee State University. Outside of Vanderbilt, she is a busy mom to two boys and is a lifelong Red Sox fan.

Brian Broughman’s research focuses on corporate governance and financial contracting, particularly in startup firms financed by venture capital. Professor Broughman entered the legal academy after earning his Ph.D. in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where his dissertation examined how governance arrangements mitigate the risk of opportunistic conduct between business founders and venture capital investors. His research also includes empirical studies related to mergers and acquisitions, shareholder voting, founder control rights, and the dominance of Delaware corporate law nationwide. Broughman’s work has been published in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Legal Studies, and Journal of Corporate Finance.

Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty, Broughman taught for 11 years at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, where he also served for two years as associate dean for research. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He practiced corporate law in Chicago immediately after earning his J.D. from the University of Michigan.

Research Interests:
Venture capital, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, financial contract design, corporate governance

Daniel Gervais focuses on international intellectual property law and the law of artificial intelligence. He spent 10 years researching and addressing policy issues as a legal officer at the World Trade Organization, head of the copyright projects section of the World Intellectual Property Organization, deputy secretary general of International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), and vice-chair of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations. He is the author of The TRIPS Agreement: Drafting History and Analysis, now in its fifth edition, a leading guide to the text that governs international intellectual property rights.

Before joining the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2008, Professor Gervais served as acting dean and vice-dean for research of the Common Law section at the University of Ottawa. Before entering the academy, he practiced law as a partner with the technology law firm BCF in Montreal. He was also a consultant with the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He has been a visiting professor at numerous international universities and was a visiting scholar at Stanford Law School. In 2012, he was the Gide Loyrette Nouel Visiting Chair at Sciences Po Law School in Paris. He is editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of World Intellectual Property. In 2012, he was the first North American law professor admitted to the Academy of Europe. In 2017 he became chairman of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP). In 2022, he was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at Carleton University. He is a member of the American Law Institute, where he serves as associate reporter on the Restatement of the Law, Copyright Project.

Research Interests:
International intellectual property law

Chris Guthrie has served as dean of Vanderbilt Law School since 2009. Dean Guthrie is a leading expert on behavioral law and economics, dispute resolution, negotiation, and judicial decision making. Over the course of his academic career, he has been recognized for his research and teaching with two CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution Professional Article prizes, the Outstanding First-Year Course Professor Award at Northwestern University Law School, and multiple teaching and research prizes at the University of Missouri, among other awards. He is one of the authors of the influential textbook Dispute Resolution and Lawyers and has published more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in leading law journals, including the University of Chicago Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

Guthrie joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2002 following six years on the faculty at the University of Missouri School of Law. He served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 2004 to 2008 before becoming its dean in July 2009. During his academic career, Guthrie has served as a visiting professor at the Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Washington University law schools. Before entering the legal academy, he practiced law with Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, California.

Guthrie graduated with distinction and honors from Stanford University and then earned his master’s in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a law degree from Stanford Law School. At Vanderbilt, Dean Guthrie has taught Torts, Negotiation, and Dispute Resolution.

Research Interests:
Behavioral law and economics, dispute resolution, negotiation, mediation, judicial decision making, legal education and scholarship

Katie Hanschke heads access services in Vanderbilt’s Alyne Queener Massey Law Library and teaches legal writing and research. Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty and library staff in 2018, Hanschke was a reference librarian at the North Carolina Central University Law Library, where she focused on student services from 2015 to 2017 and on faculty services from 2017 to 2018. Before joining the staff at the North Carolina Central University Law Library, she was a law library fellow at the Cracchiolo Law Library at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. While earning her J.D. at Georgia State University, she was a graduate research and reference assistant with the law library.

Clanitra Stewart Nejdl joined Vanderbilt’s Alyne Queener Massey Law Library in the role of research services librarian and lecturer in law in May 2019. Prior to joining the Law Library, she served for five years as a reference and instructional services librarian and an assistant professor at the Northern Illinois University College of Law Library, where she taught basic and advanced legal research classes. Nejdl is also a licensed attorney in Georgia, where she represented indigent clients in a variety of civil cases through the Georgia Legal Services program, and in South Carolina, where she provided local and statewide policy advocacy on behalf of low-income communities through the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, focusing on affordable housing, homelessness, hunger, and community economic development.

In addition to her degrees, Nejdl earned a Certificate in Advanced Legal Writing, Research and Drafting from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University. She is an active member of the American Association of Law Libraries, the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries, the Mid-America Association of Law Libraries, and the Chicago Association of Law Libraries, among other organizations. Nejdl was the 2017 winner of the American Association of Law Libraries Minority Leadership Development Award, as well as a 2016 Fellow of the American Association of Law Libraries Leadership Academy.

Lauren Rogal developed and teaches Vanderbilt’s Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic, in which students support nonprofit organizations and start-up entrepreneurs. Rogal began her legal career as an associate with Klamp & Associates, a D.C.-based law firm that represents nonprofits and social enterprises, where she focused on developing sustainable financing structures for community development and facilitated complex international transactions. She continued to practice as counsel with the firm from 2015 to 2017 while pursuing an LL.M. in advocacy and teaching the Social Enterprise and Nonprofit Law Clinic at Georgetown. Her scholarship focuses on the charitable sector and community economic development.

Rogal is affiliated with the law school’s social justice, law and business, and law and innovation programs. She earned her J.D., cum laude, at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a Clarence Darrow Scholar. She also holds a B.A., magna cum laude, in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where she was associate editor of Perspectives Journal of International Development.

Research Interests:
Advocacy, executive compensation in the nonprofit sector

Herwig Schlunk’s scholarship is concentrated on questions of corporate income taxation and individual income taxation. Before joining the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 1999, Professor Schlunk clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and spent several years in the private sector, first as an attorney with the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago and then as a mergers and acquisitions specialist at Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas. He has been a visiting professor at New York University Law School and University of Virginia Law School. He is currently teaching courses in individual income taxation and corporate income taxation.

Research Interests:
Corporate income taxation, individual income taxation, state and local taxation

Christopher Serkin teaches and writes about land use and property law. His provocative scholarship addresses local governments, property theory, the Takings Clause, land use regulations, and eminent domain. His articles have appeared in the Chicago, Columbia, Michigan, New York University, Notre Dame, and Northwestern University law reviews, among others. He is the author of The Law of Property, a book in the Concepts & Insights series, published in 2013, and a co-editor of a leading casebook, Land Use Controls (fifth edition, 2020) with Robert Ellickson, Vicki Been, and Roderick Hills. Professor Serkin was the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 2019 to 2021 and its associate dean for research from 2015 to 2017.

Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty, Serkin taught at Brooklyn Law School from 2005 to 2013. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and New York University. He began his academic career at New York University School of Law, where he taught for two years as an acting assistant professor in its lawyering program. After earning his J.D. at the University of Michigan School of Law, where he was a Clarence Darrow Scholar, Dean Serkin was a law clerk for Judge John M. Walker Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge J. Garvan Murtha of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont. Before joining the legal academy, he practiced law as an associate with Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Research Interests:
Property, land use, local governments, the Takings Clause

Jennifer Bennett Shinall’s research focuses on discrimination, particularly in the areas of gender and disability. Her research, which has been published in peer-reviewed economic journals and law journals, examines how obesity, pregnancy, and health status more generally affect labor market outcomes. Her work further considers how these effects may differ by gender and how the legal system can address any observed disparities. Professor Shinall was the first graduate of the Ph.D. in Law and Economics program at Vanderbilt University. Before returning to Vanderbilt as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Law and Economics in 2013, Shinall was a clerk for Judge John Tinder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She earned an A.B. in economics and history at Harvard University and her J.D. and Ph.D. in law and economics at Vanderbilt Law School, where she served as senior articles editor for Vanderbilt Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Shinall teaches Employment Discrimination Law and Employment Law to J.D. students and also teaches Labor Markets and Human Resources and the Ph.D. Workshop for the Ph.D. in Law and Economics.

Research Interests:
Employment law, employment discrimination, health economics, labor economics, gender, disability

Chris Slobogin has authored more than 200 articles, books, and chapters on topics relating to criminal law and procedure, mental health law, and evidence. Named director of Vanderbilt Law School’s Criminal Justice Program in 2009, Professor Slobogin is one of the five most cited criminal law and procedure law professors in the country over the past five years, according to the Leiter Report. Particularly influential has been his work on the Fourth Amendment and technology and his writing on mental disability and criminal law, appearing in books published by the Cambridge, Chicago, Harvard, NYU, and Oxford university presses and in journals such as the Chicago Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. Slobogin has served as reporter for three American Bar Association task forces (on Law Enforcement and Technology; the Insanity Defense; and Mental Disability and the Death Penalty) and as chair of both the ABA’s task force charged with revising the criminal justice mental health standards and the ABA’s Florida Assessment team for the Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. He has just completed his tenure as an associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of Police Investigation Project.

In recognition for his work in mental health law, in 2016 Slobogin received both the American Board of Forensic Psychology’s Distinguished Contribution Award and the American Psychology-Law Society’s Distinguished Contribution of Psychology and Law Award; only a total of five law professors have received either of these awards in their 30-year history, and Slobogin is the only to receive both awards. In 2020 he received Vanderbilt’s Harvie Branscomb Award for creative scholarship and teaching.

Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty, Slobogin held the Stephen C. O’Connell chair at the University of Florida’s Fredric G. Levin College of Law. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, where he was the Edwin A. Heafey Visiting Scholar, and at the Hastings, Southern California, and Virginia law schools. Internationally, he has served as visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt Law School in Germany, the Montpellier Law School in France, and the University of Kiev, Ukraine, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He has appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, the Today Show, National Public Radio, and many other media outlets, and has been cited in almost 5,000 law review articles and treatises and more than 200 judicial opinions, including five U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Slobogin holds a secondary appointment as a professor in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry.

Research Interests:
Criminal law and procedure, mental health law, evidence law

Kevin Stack writes on administrative law, regulation, separation of powers, presidential powers, European Union administrative law, and the theoretical foundations of public law. His recent work has examined the interpretation of regulations, rulemaking processes, statutory interpretation, and theories of regulation. He was recognized with the ABA’s 2013 Annual Scholarship Award for the best published work in administrative law for his Michigan Law Review article “Interpreting Regulations.” That article prompted a study, which he authored, for the Administrative Conference of the United States resulting in a set of recommendations adopted by the Conference on how federal agencies should draft their regulations. He was awarded the 2015 Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Award for Research for his Michigan Law Review article and follow-on study. He is co-author (with VLS colleagues Lisa Bressman and Ed Rubin) of The Regulatory State, a casebook on statutes and administrative lawmaking, now in its third edition.

Professor Stack has served as a member of the Council of the Administrative and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association. He joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2007 and served as associate dean for research from 2008 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2015. He currently serves as director of graduate studies for Vanderbilt’s Ph.D. in Law and Economics. Stack came to Vanderbilt from the faculty of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, which he joined in 2002 after practicing as an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk for Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before earning his J.D., he spent two years studying philosophy at Oxford University supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. He is a member of the District of Columbia and Maryland Bars.

Research Interests:
Administrative law, presidential power, statutory interpretation, separation of powers, European Union law

Mark Williams oversees the collections services department for Vanderbilt Law School’s Massey Law Library and teaches courses in Advanced Legal Research in Business and Securities and Legal Practice Technology.

Prior to joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2017, Williams spent four years at Cornell Law Library, where he served as a digital resources and outreach librarian and taught first-year legal research. He also taught courses in Law Practice Technology, Advanced Legal Research in Intellectual Property, and Advanced Legal Research in Administrative Law. From January 2010 to January 2011, he was a regional director in charge of outreach and constituent services for Rep. Walt Minnick of Idaho’s first congressional district. After earning his law degree in 2008, he worked for two years as a reporter at the Moscow-Pullman Daily newspaper in Moscow, Idaho.

Williams has been a member of the American Association of Law Libraries since 2013 and currently serves as the chair of the Teach-In Kit Committee of the Research Instruction and Patron Services Special Interest Section.