Teri A. McMurtry Chubb

Teri is a Professor of Law at UIC-John Marshall Law School. Teri researches, teaches, and writes in the areas of critical rhetoric, discourse and genre analysis, and legal history. She has lectured nationally on structural discrimination in educational institutions and the workplace, and is a leader in designing curricula to facilitate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. She is a past president of ALWD and has served as a mentor for countless members of the legal research and writing community. She is the author of several books, book chapters, and articles. She is a past recipient of the LWI Phelps Award for Scholarship in Legal Communication.

This distinguished award is presented annually to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to improve the field of Legal Writing by demonstrating (1) an ability to nurture and motivate students to excellence; (2) a willingness to help other legal writing educators improve their teaching skills or their legal writing programs; and (3) an ability to create and integrate new ideas for teaching and motivating legal writing educators and students.

Without a doubt, Teri exemplifies these qualities in several important ways. Here is an excerpt from a nominator’s statement:

Teri has been an inspiration and a mentor to a countless number of legal writing teachers and scholars . . . . She is accomplished in all of the areas that the Blackwell Award recognizes, including . . . motivating students at several institutions to excellence, crossing the country on a regular basis to teach other educators and institutions on anti-bias initiatives and curriculum, much of which she has developed herself through her scholarship. She is a leader, a thinker, a writer and a teacher extraordinaire. She has done everything I can imagine to bring up younger teachers and scholars and her powerful positivity lit the way for many professors of color in our field.

Dean Darby Dickerson helped us surprise Teri with the news. You can watch the video here:

Although we were not able to honor Teri in person, we held a virtual celebration in conjunction with the virtual AALS Annual Meeting. Teri was kind enough to share a screenshot of the celebration along with photos of her award and lamp.