Meet Our New Faculty, Part II

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, Córdoba, and Wussow—this is a return to the Forty Acres, as Belovsky earned her undergraduate degree from UT Austin, Wussow is a double Longhorn, and Córdoba a Texas Law alumna. 

For Part II of this year’s “Meet Our New Faculty” series, we’re profiling Professors Meagan Belovsky, Lauren Libby, and Maro Robbins. 

Joining the Texas Law faculty is a homecoming of sorts for Meagan Belovsky, who earned an undergraduate degree in government from UT Austin in 2015. At the time, she knew she was interested in public service but believed her career would be in government and policy.

It was the family law clinic at SMU Dedman School of Law, where she earned her J.D., that put Belovsky on a path toward working with children and families. Since then, she has worked with the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, and Denton County Friends of the Family. In 2020, she returned to clinical academia as a professor in the Domestic Violence and Family Law Clinic at South Texas College of Law Houston. Because of her own clinical experience, she says that even before she began working as a clinical professor, “I tried to position myself to mentor new attorneys and run our law clerk program, and things like that.”

Belovsky says she is “ecstatic” to return to UT Austin because, “UT really is doing more than almost any other college, especially in Texas, to help students who want to work in public service.”

As a clinical professor, Belovsky says, “I want students to leave with a professional identity as an attorney. I want them to be solution-oriented lawyers. We’re not just looking at how we can solve this specific thing my client has mentioned, but how can I transition them from victim to survivor.”

A third-generation professor, Lauren Libby knew from an early age that she wanted to teach. What took her by surprise was her interest in tax law. After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in history, she was working as chief of staff for a nonprofit organization when she got her first taste of the real-life impact of tax policy. “I can’t believe that tax law is what governs all of this,” she remembers thinking. 

“Tax always operates at the margins, but it’s also one of the primary policy levers by which Congress and states enact some of our most pressing social policy,” Libby notes.

After earning her J.D. from the University of Michigan, she became an associate with Covington & Burling in New York. Eventually, her passion for teaching led her to Yale Law School for a Ph.D. in law.

Libby hopes students in her classes are able to embrace the discomfort that sometimes comes with an often-misunderstood subject like tax law. In fact, she notes, discomfort and ambiguity are often part of the everyday practice of law that students will encounter after graduation. “I actually think that that level of discomfort is a really, really important part of learning, but it’s also one of the ripest areas for exploring and actually growing, both as a lawyer or a scholar or whatever you want to pursue,” she says. 

The son of a reporter and grandson of editors, Maro Robbins wanted to become a journalist since he was a child. He began his reporting career on the courthouse beat, spending more time in courtrooms than many attorneys do.  

But Robbins was bothered by the lopsided balance of power he often saw between prosecution and defense in criminal cases. That came to a head in 2004, when Robbins covered the exoneration of Ernest Ray Willis, who had spent 17 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Robbins says watching Willis walk out of prison “was a moment that very starkly illustrated to me that lawyers could accomplish a lot by practicing law. That was definitely a big moment in deciding that I actually wanted to practice, as opposed to being a witness to legal practice.”

Robbins graduated from Georgetown University Law School in 2010 and became a public defender in Washington, D.C. About eight years ago, he began working for the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, a Texas state public defense agency that represents people on death row in post-conviction proceedings.

Robbins rose to the office’s supervising attorney post, where he enjoyed mentoring his less experienced colleagues. The legal writing and advocacy position with Texas Law gives him the opportunity to combine teaching and mentoring with writing. He says, “Being able to really focus on the craft of that, this position seemed fun and challenging and compelling, and obviously also a privilege.”

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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