Nicole Buonocore Porter Joins William & Mary Law School as Rollins Professor
Nicole Buonocore Porter, a Professor of Law and Director of the Martin H. Malin Institute for Law and the Workplace at Chicago-Kent College of Law, has joined the William & Mary Law faculty this summer as a Rita Anne Rollins Professor of Law, the Law School announced today. She will be teaching Disability Law and Employment Law in the fall and Employment Discrimination Law and Practice in spring 2025.
“Professor Porter will be an exceptional addition to our faculty,” said A. Benjamin Spencer, Dean and Trustee Professor. “Her expertise and leadership skills will enhance areas of the law where we want to expand our faculty’s reach.”
Before joining Chicago-Kent in 2022, Porter was a Distinguished University Professor, Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Toledo College of Law. She has also taught at Saint Louis University School of Law, the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and the University of Iowa College of Law.
Porter earned her J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform. After law school, she was in-house counsel for a manufacturing company and practiced employment law in a large law firm in Detroit. She also clerked for the Honorable James L. Ryan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Porter is on the executive committee of the Labor Law Group, an invitation-only organization of law professors dedicated to producing quality scholarship and teaching materials on labor and employment law.
A nationally known expert in employment discrimination and disability law, she is the author or co-author of four books—including “The Workplace Reimagined: Accommodating Our Bodies And Our Lives” (Cambridge University Press)—and more than 40 law review articles and essays.
In 2022, Porter was elected as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation; in 2021, she was elected as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers; and in 2020, she received the Paul Steven Miller Memorial Award for “outstanding academic and public contributions to the field of labor and employment law scholarship.”