The University of Houston Law Center, with support from Houston-based Andrews Kurth, has launched the Andrews Kurth Energy Law Scholars program to encourage scholarship in energy and environmental law.
Over the next three years, five lawyers with energy and environmental experience will teach a class at the law school and “devote time to research, writing and other scholarly pursuits,” the law center announced recently.
“What we are trying to do is provide a way for people who are interested in getting into law teaching to have the opportunity to be able to research and write with the assistance of faculty members who specialize in their area, to get some experience teaching, and then go on the market,” says Richard Alderman, associate dean at the law school.
He says three of the lawyers came to the law school this fall, and two others will arrive next fall. The scholars on board this fall are Julian Cardenas Garcia, a Venezuelan attorney and former doctoral research fellow at the French Center of International Trade and Investment Law; Susan D. Maples, a graduate of Columbia Law School who is a former natural resources adviser to the president of Liberia; and Susan Sakmar, an author and former adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco Law School.
In 2013, Justin Dargin, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford and a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, and Monika Ehrman, general counsel at Ceres Resource Partners in Dallas, will come to U of H law school for the program.
Alderman says each lawyer will spend two years at the law center. He says the scholars will devote their first semester at the law school to research, and then each will teach a class for three semesters.
Bob Jewell, Andrews Kurth managing partner, did not return a call seeking comment, but he wrote in a press release that “Houston is synonymous with energy” and the firm is proud to partner with the law school on the program.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
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