Professor Laura Heymann Named Chancellor Professor of Law
Professor Laura A. Heymann has been named a Chancellor Professor of Law at William & Mary. Chancellor professorships recognize faculty who have compiled a record of distinction in scholarship, teaching and service, and who have made a significant contribution to William & Mary.
“Professor Heymann has made a substantial contribution both to William & Mary and its law school,” said Davison M. Douglas, Dean and Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law. “She is a nationally recognized Professor of intellectual property law, is an award-winning teacher, and has been a marvelous administrative leader. She had a long and successful tenure as Vice Dean of the Law School, and is the founder and director of the Law School’s highly successful Leadership Institute.”
Heymann received her B.A. in English, magna cum laude, from Yale, after which she worked as an assistant editor at St. Martin’s Press in New York. She then earned her J.D. at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she was elected to Order of the Coif and served as the Book Review Editor on the California Law Review.
Prior to joining the William & Mary law faculty in 2005, Heymann was the inaugural Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Administrative Fellow in the Intellectual Property Law Program at The George Washington University Law School. She has also served as an assistant general counsel at America Online, Inc.; as an associate at Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering in Washington, D.C.; and as a law clerk to the Hon. Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Heymann is the author of more than a dozen scholarly articles in the fields of copyright law and trademark law. She teaches Torts to first-year students as well as intellectual property courses to upper-level students.
In 2008, Heymann was selected by the graduating class as the recipient of the Walter L. Williams, Jr., Memorial Teaching Award in recognition of her outstanding teaching.
In 2012, she was the first law professor to receive William & Mary’s Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, given annually to a faculty member with fewer than 10 years of service whose teaching and influence best exemplifies the life of Thomas Jefferson. That same year, she received a Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence and from 2011 to 2014 was the Class of 2014 Professor of Law.
About William & Mary Law School
Thomas Jefferson founded William & Mary Law School in 1779 to train leaders for the new nation. Now in its third century, America's oldest law school continues its historic mission of educating citizen lawyers who are prepared both to lead and to serve.