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 III of this year’s “Meet Our New Faculty” series, we’re profiling Professors Alma Diamond, Jean Mangan, Amit Singh, and Travis Wussow.
Alma Diamond
Assistant Professor
Growing up in South Africa in the 1990s, Alma Diamond got a firsthand look at the role of the law in everyday life. “I was about six years old when my dad showed up with a little book, and I asked him what it was, and he told me, ‘It’s the new constitution,’” she recalls. “That was my first introduction to the very idea of a constitution.”
That early curiosity led to a career in academia, exploring the economic and legal underpinnings of society. Diamond earned an undergraduate degree in economics and a law degree from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, followed by an LL.M. and J.S.D. (doctorate in law) from New York University School of Law. She comes to Texas Law from a faculty fellowship position with the University of Michigan Law School.
Diamond will be teaching first-year contracts as well as a seminar on legal theory. She was drawn to Texas Law as a public institution with a robust intellectual life. “Teaching is an incredible source of learning,” remarks Diamond. “It’s incredible. You have to run thoughts through others’ minds and see what you get back, how much you clarify either your own thoughts or just arrive at your own conclusions. So I found it incredibly rewarding—both for myself and as a service—to teach.”
Jean Mangan
Senior Lecturer
Jean Mangan began her career in private practice and at district attorneys’ offices in Georgia before returning to her alma mater, the University of Georgia School of Law, as a clinical professor. Over nearly a decade, her role shifted to a legal writing instructor and director of bar passage, a program she created to help students and recent graduates get across the finish line and realize their own unique career goals.
Over her years at UGA, Mangan says she designed or redesigned nine courses, from criminal law for undergraduate law majors to Georgia legislative drafting for an online asynchronous course. Along the way, she began mentoring students who needed bar passage support, eventually building that into a full-blown program. “I love that idea of figuring out how to make something make sense—how to make it a picture someone can understand,” she says. When she learned of a position with Texas Law that combined her passions for legal writing and supporting bar passage, she knew she had to apply. During the interview process, “They told me, ‘We believe that every student of ours should be successful in their writing and in their bar passage on the first attempt, if at all possible.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, y’all are my people. Y’all just said to me the thing that I carry in my heart.’”
Amit Singh
Academic Fellow
Amit Singh is a philosopher at heart, with undergraduate and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University of Toronto. He returned to the university to earn a J.D. “when my philosophical interests veered to law” and soon found that the same intellectual challenge he loved about philosophy carried over into the study of law.
After law school, Singh practiced commercial litigation and international arbitration at Shearman & Sterling and the litigation boutique Holwell Shuster & Goldberg in New York and clerked at the Court of Appeal for British Columbia. He credits these experiences with honing the practical skills and underlying doctrine that complement the theoretical aspects of his scholarship.
In 2025, Singh completed an LL.M. at Yale Law School and became an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School. He will complete that doctoral degree in 2028. His scholarship centers on the philosophical underpinnings of tort and other areas of private law, including the interplay between torts and “morality writ large.”
As an Academic Fellow in Texas Law’s Private Law Theory Program, Singh will teach a seminar on remedies. He says he wants students to take “at least two things” from his class: “The first is command of doctrine—the kind students can rely on from their first day of practice. The second is a habit of mind: the instinct to ask not just what the law is, but why it is that way and whether it should be.”
Travis Wussow
Program Director
Travis Wussow ’08 believes his current career is a matter of fortunate timing.
When ChatGPT launched to the public in November 2022, “I was working (in a D.C. nonprofit) on First Amendment concerns about regulation of online speech and realized this mew technology would change everything,” says Wussow. “I had a professional need to study it and was fortunate to have access to some of the best thinkers on the subject.” Wussow’s curiosity extended beyond the policy implications. “I was really interested in figuring out how I could use it.”
Wussow is now an expert on using AI in legal settings. When he joined Jackson Walker’s Austin office in 2024, he was a leader in the firm’s AI transformation efforts. He left the firm this summer to co-found Bell Rock Strategies to provide AI training and transformation for law firms worldwide. And he thought he could help law students, which is why he jumped at the chance to found a Texas Law AI Skills Program.
It’s a happy homecoming for the Dallas native, who originally planned to turn his UT Austin B.B.A. into a career as an investment banker. But he says, “After a few semesters of hanging out in Excel, I realized I needed to move into the world of language.” That led to a job at a law firm and falling in love with the law. “There are few more satisfying things in life than helping people through their problems and making difficult situations a little bit better,” Wussow says.
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 Lauren Libby, Meagan Belovsky, and Travis Wussow