Vincent Southerland to join NYU Law faculty

Vincent Southerland will join the NYU Law faculty as an assistant professor of clinical law, Dean Trevor Morrison announced on November 20.

Vincent Southerland
Vincent Southerland

Since 2017, Southerland has been executive director of NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law. “In that capacity, he has emerged as an important leader of our community,” Morrison said in the email announcement. “He has also already established himself as an outstanding teacher in our clinical program, having taught the Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic here in 2019.… We are truly thrilled that Vincent will be joining our faculty.”

Southerland earned his first law degree cum laude from Temple University School of Law, where he was articles editor of the Temple Law Review.  After graduating, he clerked for Judge Theodore McKee in the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and then for Judge Louis Pollak in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. After clerking, Vincent was awarded the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship from Georgetown University Law Center, where he earned an LLM in Trial Advocacy. 

Before coming to NYU Law, Southerland served as a public defender at the Federal Defenders of New York and the Bronx Defenders, and as a senior civil rights lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 

His appointment to the NYU Law faculty will be effective this summer, Morrison said.

Posted November 20, 2020