Meet Our New Faculty, Part I

We are pleased to introduce three of the 10 new faculty members joining Texas Law during the 2026–27 academic year. To give each scholar’s work the attention it deserves, we are presenting their stories in three installments. 

Ten incredible new faculty members have joined Texas Law’s classrooms and clinics this fall, bringing with them a widely varying range of experience in practice, legal theory, and writing and advocacy.

“I am thrilled to welcome these incredible scholars and teachers to our community,” says Dean Bobby Chesney. “They will add immeasurably to our depth and breadth in the classroom and the academy.”

The new group includes three assistant professors, two clinicians, three legal writing and advocacy lecturers, a new program director, and an academic fellow.

I am thrilled to welcome these incredible scholars and teachers to our community. They will add immeasurably to our depth and breadth in the classroom and the academy.

Dean Bobby Chesney

Assistant Professors Alma Diamond, Andrew Granato, and Lauren Libby are early-career scholars with a combined 10 degrees. They bring not only sophisticated scholarship in the legal aspects of economics, business, and tax, but also practical experience and an ability to convey complex concepts in an understandable manner.

Practical experience is paramount to teaching legal research, writing, and advocacy, and the new lecturers have that in abundance. Nicole Leonard Córdoba clerked for the Supreme Court of Texas before going into private appellate practice at Greenberg Traurig where she represented clients at the highest levels of the state and federal judiciary. Maro Robbins, a journalist-turned-public defender, brings experience as a criminal trial and appellate attorney, not to mention a shoe-leather reporter who spent years reporting from Texas courthouses. Córdoba and Robbins are the newest members of the faculty for the school’s Beck Center, home of Texas Law’s legal writing and research program.

Meanwhile, senior lecturer Jean Mangan comes to Texas Law from the University of Georgia School of Law, where she created a bar success program. She’ll be teaching specialized upper-level writing courses outside the Beck Center curriculum and working closely with the Student Affairs team on academic support for students.

New Clinic Directors Cindy Dyar and Meagan Belovsky have spent their careers in public service, advocating on behalf of vulnerable populations. Dyar has worked on child welfare issues at Texas Legal Services Center and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, among others, and will co-direct the Children’s Rights Clinic, while Belovsky has represented victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse in a number of settings, also including Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. She will lead the school’s Domestic Violence Clinic. Clinics give students the opportunity to learn hands-on advocacy skills that will give them an advantage no matter what careers they pursue.

Travis Wussow will lead a new program at Texas Law: the AI Skills Program, through which students will gain general AI skills and focus on law-specific use cases. Wussow was a Jackson Walker partner, leading the firm’s AI transformation initiative.

Finally, academic fellow Amit Singh, who is the second fellow in the newly refreshed Visiting Academic Fellow program, will be part of the Private Law Theory Program. Singh is completing a doctoral degree at Harvard while continuing to write and teach on the philosophies of tort law.

For three of the new faculty members—Belovsky, Leonard Córdoba, and Wussow—this is a return to the Forty Acres, as Belovsky earned her undergraduate degree from UT Austin and Leonard Córdoba and Wussow are Texas Law alumni.

For Part I of this year’s “Meet Our New Faculty” series, we’re profiling Professors Andrew Granato, Nicole Leonard Córdoba, and Cindy Dyar.

Andrew Granato combines a deep curiosity about business law theory with a desire to connect the dots between theory and practice.  

With an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford University, along with a J.D. and a Ph.D. in financial economics from Yale—completed simultaneously—Granato long planned for a career in academia. Along the way, he applied what he was learning as a senior associate economist in the finance and research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, as well as internships with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and a summer associate position with Davis Polk & Wardwell. “My plan had been to work in academic economics, but I think what attracted me to law school was the ability to delve a lot more deeply into the institutional details of economic arrangements in a way that requires you to understand the legal frameworks that are at play,” Granato says. He hopes students will grapple with important questions about ownership, fiduciary duties, and the reasons behind organizational structure that shape how businesses operate in the real world.

Nicole Leonard Córdoba didn’t initially set out to become a lawyer. She majored in English and thought she might go on to earn a Ph.D. in the subject. But while she was working in human resources for Liberty Mutual Insurance shortly after graduation, she became intrigued by what the employment attorneys were working on.  

After graduating from Texas Law in 2017, Córdoba spent a year clerking for the Supreme Court of Texas before joining the Austin office of Greenberg Traurig. Litigation and appellate work ended up being the right combination for her background and skills. She has represented clients in various federal and state courts and appeared as amicus curiae before the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate courts.

As she begins teaching legal research and writing to law students, Córdoba is excited about the challenges and opportunities for tech use in a changing world. She says new attorneys will need to learn to use AI and other technologies effectively but first require a solid foundation in legal analysis and writing. “I want students to come away from my class with a good understanding of legal analysis that they can apply when faced with new questions of law, regardless of the technology they use,” she says.

Cindy Dyar has always been passionate about justice, fairness, and equity. Her interest in litigation developed as a student practitioner in the child advocacy law clinic at Michigan Law. It’s fitting, then, that after nearly two decades representing children and parents, she now leads the Children’s Rights Clinic at Texas Law.

“I never went into law school with a feeling of which issue area (would be my primary focus), and this field kind of found me,” she says. “I’ve been directly involved with child welfare now for about 15 years, but it was always the injustice piece that drew me in, and I was very interested in advocacy.”

Most recently, Dyar was the managing director of the Texas Legal Services Center. She also worked for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. There, she founded and directed the Family Defense Project to represent families before Child Protective Services files a case. At that stage, they face legal challenges but aren’t yet entitled to a court-appointed attorney.

As a clinical professor, Dyar hopes to help students interested in careers in child welfare, while also preparing students for client work in any field. “I really just want to work with students to make them the best attorneys they can be in client matters, in court cases, no matter what issue area they end up in after graduation,” she says.

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Meet our New Faculty Series

Part I – Get to know Andrew Granato, Cindy Dyar, and Nicole Leonard Córdoba

Part II – Get to know Meagan Belovsky, Lauren Libby, and Maro Robbins

Part III – Get to know Alma Diamond, Jean Mangan, Amit Singh, and Travis Wussow