Elon University School of Law announced the appointment of four new faculty members on August 18. Robert Parrish and Michael L. Rich will serve as assistant professors of law, specializing in legal writing and criminal law respectively. Patricia Perkins will serve as an assistant professor of legal writing and Angela Gilmore, whose scholarship interests include trusts and estates, nonprofit organizations, real estate law, and lesbian and gay rights, will serve as a visiting professor of law.
“We welcome these four distinguished scholars and members of the legal profession to Elon Law,” said George R. Johnson, Jr., dean and professor of law. “Each of them has been recognized for outstanding scholarship, innovative teaching, and service to the profession and to society.”
NEW FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES
Angela Gilmore
Visiting Professor of Law
A professor of law at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, Gilmore has taught courses in sales, property, nonprofit organizations, contracts, and anti-discrimination law. She has served as visiting assistant professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and has additional teaching experience through the CLEO Summer Law Institute and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Gilmore has practiced with the law firm of Weinberg and Green as a corporate associate and as a law clerk with Dickie, McCamey and Chilcote, P.C. Her scholarship is in the areas of trusts and estates, nonprofit organizations, real estate law, lesbian and gay rights, and innovations in teaching the law. Gilmore is a cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she earned a J.D., and Houghton College, where she earned a B.A. in social sciences.
Robert Parrish
Assistant Professor of Law
Parrish joins the law faculty at Elon after serving as a Lecturer in Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law since 2007, where he taught courses in legal research and writing. He previously practiced in the litigation and appellate practice sections of Bose McKinney & Evans LLP, working primarily on commercial litigation issues. Parrish served as a Clerk for Justice Frank Sullivan Jr., Indiana Supreme Court, from 2004 to 2006, and has served in the law firms of Baker & Daniels and Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice P.L.L.C. In addition to his legal work, Parrish also has experience as an oral historian and archivist, having worked for the Center for Documentary Studies’ Behind the Veil project, which produced “Remembering Jim Crow” a compilation of interviews with African Americans born between 1900 and 1940. He is a co-editor of “Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South” (The New Press 2001). Parrish earned his B.A. with honors from Indiana University, his Master of Arts in history from Duke University, and his J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was articles editor for the North Carolina Law Review.
Patricia Perkins
Assistant Professor of Legal Writing
Patricia Perkins joins the Elon law school faculty as assistant professor of legal writing after teaching legal method and communication as an adjunct professor. Perkins previously served as chief operating officer for Master Key Consulting headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, and as a litigator with Smith Moore LLP, now Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her private practice focused on complex commercial disputes, constitutional torts and civil rights cases, and workers’ compensation claims. She represents, pro bono, death row inmates raising Eighth Amendment challenges to lethal injection in litigation that has included appeals in the United States Supreme Court. Perkins earned her law degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law where she was on the moot court board and mock trial team and was selected for Order of the Coif. She graduated, magna cum laude, from Davidson College where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Michael L. Rich
Assistant Professor of Law
Prior to joining Elon, Rich served as an Assistant Professor of Law at Capital University Law School, where he taught courses in criminal law, evidence, and professional responsibility. Before joining academia, he practiced at the Cincinnati law firm of Vorys Sater Seymour & Pease LLP, where he worked mainly on government fraud litigation under the civil False Claims Act, civil rights litigation, and white-collar criminal cases. In addition, he served as law clerk to Judge Susan J. Dlott of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Rich began his legal career at the New York City law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, where his practice focused on the litigation of claims under the First Amendment seeking access to public property and public accommodations. Rich’s areas of research include criminal law, civil and criminal white-collar litigation, police investigatory methods, and government fraud. His publications include, Coerced Informants and the Thirteenth Amendment Limitations on the Police-Informant Relationship, Santa Clara Law Review, 2010. Rich received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, in Physics and English from the University of Delaware.