Meet Our New Faculty, Part III 

We are pleased to be able to introduce readers to 10 new faculty members joining Texas Law during the 2025-26 academic year. So that we can focus on each scholar’s work, we have been sharing their stories across three articles over the course of two weeks. 

Texas Law is welcoming a record 10 new teachers and scholars to its faculty for the coming school year, capping off a busy and productive hiring campaign. 

“Our world-class faculty is getting even bigger and better this year,” says Dean Bobby Chesney. “We’re adding to our depth, range, and excellence in timely and important areas of the law. This is fantastic for everybody—especially our students.” 

Each one is doing important work that will enrich our learning and research environment.

Melissa Wasserman,
associate dean for research

The newest faculty members include six people joining the research faculty, with four senior scholars and two early-career rising stars; two new lecturers, one joining from the adjunct ranks and one who was previously a visiting instructor; and two academic fellows. 

“This is an incredible variety of talents,” says Melissa Wasserman, Texas Law’s associate dean for research. “Each one is doing important work that will enrich our learning and research environment.”  

Professors Rachel Rebouché and Paul Gugliuzza both come to Texas Law from Temple University Beasley School of Law, where Rebouché served as dean from 2022 until this spring. Professor Avihay Dorfman arrives in Austin from the University of Tel Aviv’s Buchmann School of Law. Professor Aaron Nielson joins the faculty from Brigham Young University and from his service as Texas solicitor general, a role he held from 2023 until this June. 

Susan Yorke and Alexander Zhang each come to the Forty Acres as assistant professors. Yorke was most recently a lecturer at Stanford Law School, while Zhang was at Yale Law School. 

Texas Law’s newest lecturers are no strangers to the law school. Christopher Kulander taught last year as a visiting lecturer, making the commute from Houston, where he was previously a professor at the South Texas College of Law. He is now a senior lecturer. Lauren Tanner Bradley not only taught as an adjunct last year, but she is also an alumna, having earned her Juris Doctor as a member of the Class of 2008. 

Texas Law is also welcoming two new fellows. Kevin Frazier is the inaugural AI Innovation Fellow and he is directing the school’s new AI Innovation and Law Program. He was previously an assistant professor at Miami’s St. Thomas University College of Law. Prachi Mehta is the first awardee of Texas Law’s relaunched Academic Fellows program, supporting emerging scholars aspiring to join the legal academy. She was previously a litigator in California.

Avihay Dorfman joins Texas Law from Tel Aviv University and will lead the school’s ambitious Private Law Theory program. A prolific author who researches and teaches on the theoretical foundations of law, including private law, the private/public distinction, and theories of political legitimation, Dorfman published two books in 2024 alone: the legal theory book “Reclaiming the Public, and Relational Justice: A Theory of Private Law,” coauthored with Berkeley Law’s Hanoch Dagan. 

“I’m excited by the opportunity to join and contribute to an intellectually vibrant community of highly engaged scholars,” says Dorfman, who will be teaching torts policy this fall and property in the spring. 

Dorfman has been with the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law since 2009, starting as a lecturer and rising through the ranks to become a full professor in 2019. He also has been a visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and Cornell Law School. He earned his bachelor’s in economics and an LL.B. from Haifa University and his LL.M. and J.S.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, he clerked for The Hon. Aharon Barak, the (then) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel. 

Christopher Kulander, a prominent expert in oil and gas law, joins Texas Law as a senior lecturer and will serve as the academic director of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center, a joint project of the schools of law, business, engineering, and geosciences. Having taught a well-received Oil and Gas Law course at Texas Law last spring as a visiting lecturer, Kulander will “reinforce our remarkable strength in energy, while also deepening our ties to the KBH Energy Center,” says Dean Bobby Chesney. 

A former geophysicist, Kulander spent a decade as professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, where he served as director of the school’s Oil & Gas Law Institute. He is also an international lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania. Before entering academia, Kulander practiced law for six years at two Texas-based firms, focusing on energy law. 

He is excited to join Texas Law’s elite faculty. “To borrow an expression from baseball, the faculty here is a veritable ‘Murderers’ Row’ of powerhouse academics,” says Kulander. “To be a part of that juggernaut is both daunting and exhilarating.” 

Kulander has written and published in the fields of oil and gas law, land use control, American Indian law, geology, and petroleum seismology. He earned his J.D. from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, his doctorate in geophysics from Texas A&M University, and both his bachelor’s and master’s in geology from Wright State University. 

For Lauren Tanner Bradley ’08, Townes Hall is familiar territory. A proud Texas Law alumna, as a student she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as notes editor of the Texas Law Review. She also returned last fall as an adjunct professor to teach a seminar-style advanced legal writing course tailored to the appellate context. 

Now a lecturer with the David J. Beck Center for Legal Research, Writing, and Appellate Advocacy, Tanner Bradley will teach Legal Analysis and Communication this fall and Persuasive Writing and Advocacy in the spring. 

Her professional experience includes serving as an assistant United States attorney in the Western District of Texas Criminal Appellate Division in Austin and previously in the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington. From 2009 to 2016, she was a trial and appellate associate at Baker Botts in Houston. After graduating from Texas Law, she clerked for the Hon. William Garwood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. 

Tanner Bradley earned her bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University, where she was a varsity softball player and an All-American Scholar-Athlete. 

“My experience as a student at Texas Law profoundly influenced my legal career,” she says. “I’m looking forward to paying it forward to the next generation.” 

Meet Our New Faculty — Fall 2025 Series

Part I — Meet Professors Aaron Nielson and Rachel Rebouché, and Assistant Professor Alexander Zhang

Part II — Meet Professor Paul Gugliuzza, Assistant Professor Susan Yorke, and Fellow Kevin Frazier

Part III — Meet Professor Avihay Dorfman, Senior Lecturer Christopher Kulander, and Lecturer Lauren Tanner Bradley