Education
Professor of Environmental Law
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Professors of Environmental Law teach courses on environmental statutes, regulatory compliance, and natural resources law at accredited law schools while maintaining active scholarly research agendas. They advise students, supervise clinics, contribute to faculty governance, and engage with practitioners, agencies, and advocacy organizations to shape a field that sits at the intersection of administrative law, property, and science policy.
Role at a glance
- Typical education
- JD required; LLM or SJD/PhD in law or public policy common
- Typical experience
- 2-5 years of legal practice
- Key certifications
- None typically required
- Top employer types
- Research law schools, regional law schools, legal clinics, think tanks
- Growth outlook
- Active hiring area driven by sustained student interest and high policy importance
- AI impact (through 2030)
- Augmentation — basic facility with NLP tools for analyzing regulatory text is a differentiator, but core scholarly analysis and legal reasoning remain human-centric.
Duties and responsibilities
- Teach JD courses including Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, Climate Regulation, and Administrative Law to classes of 15–80 students
- Design and update course syllabi integrating current EPA rulemakings, NEPA litigation, and agency guidance developments
- Produce original legal scholarship — law review articles, book chapters, policy reports — for peer-reviewed and student-edited journals
- Supervise students in environmental law clinics representing clients before federal and state agencies or in public interest litigation
- Advise JD and LLM students on course selection, career tracks in environmental practice, and independent research projects
- Present research at faculty workshops, AALS conferences, and environmental law symposia to build scholarly reputation
- Serve on law school committees including curriculum, admissions, and faculty appointments, contributing to institutional governance
- Secure external funding through grants from EPA, NSF, foundations, or research centers to support scholarship and clinic operations
- Collaborate with science, policy, and engineering faculty on interdisciplinary research involving environmental data and regulatory design
- Engage with practitioners, NGOs, government agencies, and media as a subject-matter expert on environmental and climate policy issues
Overview
A Professor of Environmental Law occupies one of the more intellectually demanding chairs in a law school faculty. The field spans Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act doctrine, NEPA procedure, Endangered Species Act litigation, climate regulation under CAA Section 111, federal public lands law, toxic substances control, and an expanding body of state and international law. Keeping teaching materials current in a field driven by agency rulemakings and federal court decisions — particularly from the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court — requires continuous engagement with regulatory developments that move faster than textbook revision cycles.
On the teaching side, a typical load at a research law school is two to three courses per semester. Core offerings like introductory Environmental Law draw large enrollment; advanced seminars on topics such as Climate Litigation Strategies or Energy Regulation and the Grid may enroll 10–15 students and are organized around student papers and Socratic discussion. Environmental law clinics add a supervision dimension that is closer to law practice than to conventional classroom teaching — students handle real matters, and the professor is responsible for both the educational experience and the professional quality of the work product.
The scholarship expectation is where this role diverges most sharply from most other teaching professions. Law professors at research institutions are expected to produce original legal arguments — identifying gaps in doctrine, critiquing agency interpretations, proposing statutory reforms, or conducting empirical analysis of regulatory outcomes. The dominant publication venue is the student-edited law review. A productive environmental law professor publishes one to two major articles per year, engages in workshop circulation of works-in-progress, and builds a reputation that makes them a recognizable voice in the field.
Beyond classroom and research, the external-facing dimension of the role is substantial. Environmental law is a policy-active area: professors testify before Congress, submit expert comments in agency rulemakings, consult with state environmental agencies, and write op-eds and policy briefs. The line between scholar and advocate is blurry in practice, and navigating it requires judgment about institutional role and scholarly independence.
Qualifications
Degrees and credentials:
- JD from an accredited law school (required for all positions)
- LLM in environmental, energy, or natural resources law (common for entry-level candidates; programs at Vermont Law, Lewis & Clark, UCLA, and George Washington are well-regarded)
- SJD or PhD in law, public policy, or a related discipline (increasingly common at research-intensive schools)
- Strong academic record — law review membership, Order of the Coif — matters more at elite hiring institutions than at regional schools
Practice background:
- 2–5 years at DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division, EPA Office of General Counsel, state AG environmental unit, or public interest litigation firm
- Federal appellate clerkship — particularly D.C. Circuit — is highly valued and often expected at top-20 law schools
- NEPA, Clean Air Act, or Clean Water Act practice in private firm settings is transferable but typically weighted less heavily than government or public interest work
Scholarly output:
- Entry-level tenure-track candidates typically present one to three published or forthcoming articles in peer-reviewed or student-edited law journals
- Demonstrated research agenda that reviewers can see carrying forward for a career — not just one completed project
- Familiarity with empirical legal studies methods is increasingly valued; basic facility with regression analysis or NLP tools for analyzing regulatory text is a differentiator
Teaching and clinical skills:
- Experience supervising student legal work (law school clinics, externship supervision, moot court)
- Socratic method fluency — particularly for large doctrinal courses
- Familiarity with legal education technology: TWEN or Canvas for course management, interactive hypothetical platforms
Professional presence:
- Active on the AALS Environmental Law section
- Workshop circuit participation: presenting drafts at faculty colloquia, symposia, and works-in-progress workshops
- Comfort engaging across disciplines with scientists, engineers, and economists in collaborative research settings
Career outlook
The law professor job market is competitive in all specialty areas, and environmental law is no exception. The AALS entry-level hiring season processes several hundred candidates for fewer than 100 tenure-track positions annually across all subjects; environmental law openings in any given year number in the low dozens nationally. That said, environmental and energy law is one of the more active hiring areas in legal academia, driven by sustained student interest and the genuine policy importance of the field.
Several factors are shaping the market in 2025 and 2026. The rollback of major Biden-era environmental regulations and the legal challenges those rollbacks are generating — under the major questions doctrine, Loper Bright, and West Virginia v. EPA — have made environmental administrative law one of the most doctrinally active areas in all of U.S. law. Law schools respond to student interest and bar exam relevance, and both currently favor environmental and energy law hiring.
Climate litigation is generating a second hiring signal. Cases brought by state AGs and municipalities against fossil fuel companies, NEPA challenges to LNG and pipeline infrastructure, and ESA litigation over climate-vulnerable species are producing a volume of significant court decisions that support new doctrinal courses and scholarship. Candidates who can teach climate law as a distinct subject — beyond traditional environmental regulation — are in demand.
The clinical market has grown separately from the doctrinal market. Environmental and energy justice clinics have expanded at schools including Yale, Vermont, NYU, and Michigan, often funded by foundation grants targeting underserved communities facing pollution or climate displacement. Clinical positions are generally more accessible than tenure-track roles but carry less job security.
For candidates with strong credentials — federal clerkship, top-journal publication, ENRD or EPA practice experience — the market rewards specialization and early scholarly productivity. Lateral movement between institutions is common for tenured professors who develop national reputations, and named chairs at research universities represent the senior career summit. Outside academia, former environmental law professors move into senior agency roles, appellate advocacy positions, and think-tank leadership — the credential travels well.
Sample cover letter
Dear Appointments Committee,
I am writing to apply for the tenure-track position in Environmental Law at [Law School]. I am a candidate in the AALS Faculty Appointments Register. I clerked for Judge [Name] on the D.C. Circuit, practiced for three years in the Environment and Natural Resources Division's Appellate Section, and have spent the past two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at [Law School], where I teach a 60-student Environmental Law survey and a 12-student seminar on Federal Public Lands.
My primary research examines how agencies can structure Clean Air Act Section 111(d) rulemakings to survive major questions doctrine review after West Virginia v. EPA — a question with direct consequences for EPA's current methane and power sector rulemakings. My article on this topic, forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review, argues that the statutory best-system-of-emission-reduction standard provides more durable authority for grid-level emissions policy than the generation-shifting approach the Court rejected, provided agencies build a specific kind of administrative record during the rulemaking process.
I have a second article under review at the Yale Law Journal examining NEPA's information-forcing function in the context of deep-sea mining permits — a topic that brings together hard-look review doctrine and rapidly evolving scientific uncertainty in a way I find genuinely interesting to teach.
My teaching evaluations from both courses are in my dossier. Students in the survey have consistently noted that connecting each doctrine to a pending agency action or active litigation makes the material feel consequential rather than historical.
I would welcome the opportunity to present my scholarship to your faculty.
[Your Name]
Frequently asked questions
- What credentials are required to become a Professor of Environmental Law?
- A JD from an accredited law school is the baseline requirement; most tenure-track hires also hold an LLM or SJD in environmental or natural resources law, or have a strong secondary academic degree in a related field such as ecology or public policy. Elite law schools increasingly expect candidates to have published one or two substantial articles before entering the entry-level market through the AALS Faculty Appointments Register (FAR) process.
- Do law professors need bar admission or practice experience?
- Bar admission is not typically required for tenure-track positions, though most environmental law professors practiced — at the EPA, DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division, state attorneys general offices, or private environmental practices — before moving to the academy. Practice experience gives credibility with students and grounds scholarship in how regulatory systems actually function.
- How does the tenure process work for law faculty?
- The standard law school tenure clock runs six years, with a mandatory review in the sixth year. Tenure decisions hinge primarily on scholarly productivity — the quality and quantity of law review publications assessed by external reviewers — alongside teaching evaluations and service. Unlike other academic disciplines, law schools generally weight peer reputation and publication venue heavily, with placements in the Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, or Chicago law reviews carrying significant signal.
- How is AI and legal technology affecting environmental law scholarship and teaching?
- AI-assisted legal research tools are changing how students and practitioners search environmental case law and regulatory history, and law professors are adapting doctrinal courses to address AI governance questions that intersect with administrative law. Some environmental law scholars are incorporating computational analysis of agency comment records and litigation databases into their empirical research — a methodological shift that is opening new scholarly territory.
- What is the difference between a doctrinal environmental law professor and a clinical professor?
- Doctrinal faculty teach case-method courses covering the substance and theory of environmental law and are expected to produce scholarly writing. Clinical faculty supervise students doing live legal work — permitting challenges, regulatory comments, citizen suits — and are evaluated primarily on teaching and supervision quality rather than scholarship. Clinical positions are often non-tenure-track and carry different compensation structures and job security.
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