Allison Orr Larsen, a professor at the College of William and Mary Law School, was recognized recently as an early career “Rising Star” by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and Dominion Resources.
Larsen and 12 other educators from the state and private colleges will receive a 2014 Outstanding Faculty Award – an honor for excellence in teaching, research and service. She is one of two to also be recognized as a “Rising Star,” a person who shows extraordinary promise in her early career. Associate Professor of Chemistry Linda Columbus from University of Virginia also received “Rising Star” recognition this year.
Three other members of the W&M law school’s faculty have also received the Outstanding Faculty Award. William & Mary has garnered 37 of the awards since the honors were created in 1987.
Larsen is in her fourth year of teaching at W&M and has earned two classroom awards there: the Walter L. Williams Jr. Memorial Teaching Award and the Alumni Fellowship Award. She has studied the practice of dissent by judges on controversial cases, negotiation and compromise by jurors and the citation of materials outside the record by courts in a technologically advanced age.
“We don’t have to find facts on the record in a trial anymore,” Larsen said in a news release from the college. “Judges can find facts on their own, through Google, for example. I’ve spent some time researching whether that is a good development, and what the risks and what the virtues are. I think part of my challenge as a legal scholar writing in 2014 will be to address how the law is affected and will continue to be affected by this revolution in information technology. I think that is going to be the challenge for the next generation of lawyers.”
Jillian Jacobs, an alumna of the W&M law school who is now a law clerk at Dechert LLP in Boston, said she always respected Larsen because she was both an accomplished scholar and a teacher dedicated to inspiring every student in her classroom.
Sarah L. Melchior, another one of Larsen’s past students, said Larsen had an “exceptional legal mind” and was always committed to being more than an instructor.
“Her skill as a teacher is matched by her value as a mentor,” Melchior said in a W&M release.
Larsen is a Charlottesville native who graduated magna cum laude from W&M and was first in her class at the University of Virginia School of Law where she received the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the highest award a graduating student can receive from law faculty.
After UVa., Larsen served as law clerk under both Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson II of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court. She began her academic career — after a stint practicing in appellate litigation for O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C. — as a Scholar-in-Residence at The Catholic University School of Law. In 2010, Larsen joined the W&M faculty.
