Meet the Deans
Dean of the University of Tennessee College of Law
Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. is the Dean and Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law. He joined the College of Law in 2022, after spending 20 years at the University of Georgia School of Law where he was the A. Gus Cleveland Distinguished Chair of Legal Ethics and Professionalism and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, the university’s highest honor for teaching excellence. From 2013 to 2015, he served as Georgia Law’s associate dean for academic affairs.
Dean Brown’s research concentrates primarily on legal ethics in the adversary system, and he speaks and writes frequently in this area. He also has written a biography of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark titled Defending the Public’s Enemy: The Life and Legacy of Ramsey Clark (Stanford University Press, 2019) and is a co-author of Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach (West Academic, 5th ed. 2023).
Earlier in his career, Dean Brown was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and served as a visiting assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. In addition, he taught at Emory University as an adjunct professor. He also served as a judicial clerk for Judge William C. O’Kelley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. From 1991 to 1999, he practiced law as an associate and a partner at Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dean Brown is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the Board of Trustees for the American Inns of Court. He also serves on the Drafting Committee for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam and has been a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, a body responsible for issuing formal opinions interpreting the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Model Code of Judicial Conduct. In addition, Dean Brown served for 11 years on the State Bar of Georgia’s Formal Advisory Opinion Board and is a longstanding member of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.
A dedicated teacher, Dean Brown has received numerous teaching awards throughout his career. He was the inaugural recipient of Georgia Law’s C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching and received the Student Bar Association’s Professionalism Award on 15 separate occasions. In addition, he was selected five times to serve as an honorary faculty marshal at commencement by graduating classes. At the university level, Dean Brown served as an Administrative Fellow in the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, a Senior Teaching Fellow, and a member of UGA’s Teaching Academy.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Emory University, where he was a Robert W. Woodruff Scholar, student body president, and recipient of the Marion Luther Brittain Award, Emory’s highest student honor. He then earned his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was a Patrick Wilson Scholar and editor-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.
He and his wife, Kim, have two children, Theddaux and Olivia.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Associate Dean Michael J. Higdon teaches and writes in the areas of Constitutional Law; Sexuality, Gender and the Law; Wills & Trusts; and Family Law. His scholarship in these areas has been published in several journals, including the Alabama Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the George Washington Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Iowa Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, and the Wake Forest Law Review, just to name a few. In 2023, he became an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Higdon received the J.D. in 2001 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (“UNLV”), graduating first in his class and receiving the James E. Rogers Award for outstanding academic achievement. While in law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the Nevada Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Procter Hug, Jr. of the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Since joining the faculty in 2009, Higdon has received a number of awards, including the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution, the W. Allen Separk Faculty Scholarship Award, the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship. Over the course of his career, the student body has also recognized him as professor of the year three different times – once when one he was a faculty member at UNLV and twice through the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award here at the University of Tennessee.
He previously served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development for four years. He has also served as Faculty Fellow in the Provost’s Office of Faculty Affairs, recently represented the University of Tennessee as one of its delegates in the SEC Academic Development Leadership Program, and currently serves as a program coordinator for the University’s Leadership Development Program as well as its Faculty Mentoring Certificate Program.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development
Associate Dean Zack Buck specializes in health law, and his scholarship examines the enforcement of laws that affect health and health care in the United States. Most recently, his writing has focused on the corporatization of American medicine, the regulation of pharmaceutical drug prices and hospitals, and the intersection between healthcare finance and medical quality.
His work has been published in the California Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Ohio State Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and Florida State Law Review, among others. Buck has also been quoted in national outlets such as CNN, USA Today, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times, and is a frequent contributor to the online journal, Jotwell.
Since joining the faculty in 2016, Dean Buck has won student-selected awards for his teaching, recognized both as the College of Law’s teacher of the year with the 2019 Harold Warner Outstanding Teacher Award, and the 2023 Outstanding Teacher as part of the Physician Executive MBA Program at the Haslam College of Business. He has had his scholarship recognized by receiving the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence (2016), the Wilkinson Junior Research Professorship (2017), the John Reginald Hill Faculty Scholar Award (2022), and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship (2023). He was also the recipient of the 2019 Forrest W. Lacy Award for outstanding contributions to the UT Law moot court program.
Dean Buck holds a BA in Political Science and Journalism from Miami University (OH), a Masters in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He has taught at Mercer University School of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law, and at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and he formerly practiced complex commercial litigation at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago.
Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement
Associate Dean Rosenbaum joined UT Law in 2013 from Stanford Law School, where she was a Thomas C. Grey Fellow. She received her bachelor’s degree from Santa Clara University. While there, she took a semester to study at American University in Washington D.C., and interned at the White House during the impeachment proceedings of President Clinton. Dean Rosenbaum received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (now UC Law San Francisco), where she served on the Hastings Law Journal, as a counselor for the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center’s Workers’ Rights Clinic, and as an intern for the California State Assembly, Committee on Public Safety. After graduation, Dean Rosenbaum clerked for two federal judges appointed to chair the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure: Judge David F. Levi of the Eastern District of California and Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Following her clerkships, she worked as an associate in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen, where she enjoyed a diverse practice focused on both civil and criminal complex litigation.
Dean Rosenbaum was a first generation undergraduate and law student. She has been a faculty advisor for Vols for Vets, UT Law’s veteran student organization, since its founding in 2017. She engages in advocacy on behalf of the transgender community, and she contributed a chapter on transgender students’ experiences with the juvenile justice system in the book, Critical Guide to Civil Procedure. Dean Rosenbaum’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in American legal education. She is an Academic Fellow for the National Civil Justice Institute.
Associate Dean for Library and Technology Services
Scott Childs joined the UT College of Law in 2011 from the University of North Carolina School of Law where he was the deputy director at the Katherine R. Everett Law Library and a Clinical Professor of Law since 2007. At UNC Law, he served as assistant director for public services since 2001, managing law library public services and coordinating the advanced legal research courses.
Prior to joining the staff at UNC Law, Childs served as head of reference at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and was both a reference librarian and headed the collection development at Cornell Law School.
Professor Childs began his legal career with the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama, serving as a Staff Attorney and then as a Senior Staff Attorney until 1995.
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
Having personally experienced the incalculable consequences of identifying a driving purpose in his life, Assistant Interim Dean Brad Morgan cherishes the opportunities in both his professional and personal life to assist others in identifying their values and goals, recognizing their strengths, and moving forward with intentionality.
Assistant Dean Morgan is a UT Law alumnus. He has extensive an legal background with strong ties to the legal community, and he is an expert in leadership and pro bono initiatives. He joined the College of Law in 2010 as the mentoring and Access to Justice coordinator and later served as the director of the Bettye B. Lewis Career Center.
A frequent speaker and occasional author, he looks for moments of shared dialogue and learning, believing that every interaction affords the occasion to walk away a better person than before. Having grown up in New Mexico, he believes that the correct answer to the question “red or green chile?” is almost always green.
Assistant Dean for Finance, Administration and Operations
David Price joined the College of Law in July 2022 and oversees the College of Law business office.
An alumnus of the University of Tennessee (’03) and the Nashville School of Law, Price has more than 18 years of experience in administration and finance operations with more than 14 of those years in higher education. He was previously the assistant director of the financial information office with the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business.
He has also worked in UT’s Office of Budget and Finance and with the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor.
Dean of the College of Law
Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. is the Dean and Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law. He joined the College of Law in 2022, after spending 20 years at the University of Georgia School of Law where he was the A. Gus Cleveland Distinguished Chair of Legal Ethics and Professionalism and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, the university’s highest honor for teaching excellence. From 2013 to 2015, he served as Georgia Law’s associate dean for academic affairs.
Dean Brown’s research concentrates primarily on legal ethics in the adversary system, and he speaks and writes frequently in this area. He also has written a biography of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark titled Defending the Public’s Enemy: The Life and Legacy of Ramsey Clark (Stanford University Press, 2019) and is a co-author of Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach (West Academic, 5th ed. 2023).
Earlier in his career, Dean Brown was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and served as a visiting assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. In addition, he taught at Emory University as an adjunct professor. He also served as a judicial clerk for Judge William C. O’Kelley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. From 1991 to 1999, he practiced law as an associate and a partner at Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dean Brown is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the Board of Trustees for the American Inns of Court. He also serves on the Drafting Committee for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam and has been a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, a body responsible for issuing formal opinions interpreting the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Model Code of Judicial Conduct. In addition, Dean Brown served for 11 years on the State Bar of Georgia’s Formal Advisory Opinion Board and is a longstanding member of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.
A dedicated teacher, Dean Brown has received numerous teaching awards throughout his career. He was the inaugural recipient of Georgia Law’s C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching and received the Student Bar Association’s Professionalism Award on 15 separate occasions. In addition, he was selected five times to serve as an honorary faculty marshal at commencement by graduating classes. At the university level, Dean Brown served as an Administrative Fellow in the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, a Senior Teaching Fellow, and a member of UGA’s Teaching Academy.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Emory University, where he was a Robert W. Woodruff Scholar, student body president, and recipient of the Marion Luther Brittain Award, Emory’s highest student honor. He then earned his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was a Patrick Wilson Scholar and editor-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.
He and his wife, Kim, have two children, Theddaux and Olivia.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development
Associate Dean Michael J. Higdon teaches and writes in the areas of Constitutional Law; Sexuality, Gender and the Law; Wills & Trusts; and Family Law. His scholarship in these areas has been published in several journals, including the Alabama Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the George Washington Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Iowa Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, and the Wake Forest Law Review, just to name a few. In 2023, he became an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Higdon received the J.D. in 2001 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (“UNLV”), graduating first in his class and receiving the James E. Rogers Award for outstanding academic achievement. While in law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the Nevada Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Procter Hug, Jr. of the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Since joining the faculty in 2009, Higdon has received a number of awards, including the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution, the W. Allen Separk Faculty Scholarship Award, the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship. Over the course of his career, the student body has also recognized him as professor of the year three different times – once when one he was a faculty member at UNLV and twice through the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award here at the University of Tennessee.
He previously served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development for four years. He has also served as Faculty Fellow in the Provost’s Office of Faculty Affairs, recently represented the University of Tennessee as one of its delegates in the SEC Academic Development Leadership Program, and currently serves as a program coordinator for the University’s Leadership Development Program as well as its Faculty Mentoring Certificate Program.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development
Associate Dean Zack Buck specializes in health law, and his scholarship examines the enforcement of laws that affect health and health care in the United States. Most recently, his writing has focused on the corporatization of American medicine, the regulation of pharmaceutical drug prices and hospitals, and the intersection between healthcare finance and medical quality.
His work has been published in the California Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Ohio State Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and Florida State Law Review, among others. Buck has also been quoted in national outlets such as CNN, USA Today, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times, and is a frequent contributor to the online journal, Jotwell.
Since joining the faculty in 2016, Dean Buck has won student-selected awards for his teaching, recognized both as the College of Law’s teacher of the year with the 2019 Harold Warner Outstanding Teacher Award, and the 2023 Outstanding Teacher as part of the Physician Executive MBA Program at the Haslam College of Business. He has had his scholarship recognized by receiving the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence (2016), the Wilkinson Junior Research Professorship (2017), the John Reginald Hill Faculty Scholar Award (2022), and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship (2023). He was also the recipient of the 2019 Forrest W. Lacy Award for outstanding contributions to the UT Law moot court program.
Dean Buck holds a BA in Political Science and Journalism from Miami University (OH), a Masters in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He has taught at Mercer University School of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law, and at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and he formerly practiced complex commercial litigation at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago.
Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement
Associate Dean Rosenbaum joined UT Law in 2013 from Stanford Law School, where she was a Thomas C. Grey Fellow. She received her bachelor’s degree from Santa Clara University. While there, she took a semester to study at American University in Washington D.C., and interned at the White House during the impeachment proceedings of President Clinton. Dean Rosenbaum received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (now UC Law San Francisco), where she served on the Hastings Law Journal, as a counselor for the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center’s Workers’ Rights Clinic, and as an intern for the California State Assembly, Committee on Public Safety. After graduation, Dean Rosenbaum clerked for two federal judges appointed to chair the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure: Judge David F. Levi of the Eastern District of California and Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Following her clerkships, she worked as an associate in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen, where she enjoyed a diverse practice focused on both civil and criminal complex litigation.
Dean Rosenbaum was a first generation undergraduate and law student. She has been a faculty advisor for Vols for Vets, UT Law’s veteran student organization, since its founding in 2017. She engages in advocacy on behalf of the transgender community, and she contributed a chapter on transgender students’ experiences with the juvenile justice system in the book, Critical Guide to Civil Procedure. Dean Rosenbaum’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in American legal education. She is an Academic Fellow for the National Civil Justice Institute.
Associate Dean for Library & Technology Services
Scott Childs joined the UT College of Law in 2011 from the University of North Carolina School of Law where he was the deputy director at the Katherine R. Everett Law Library and a Clinical Professor of Law since 2007. At UNC Law, he served as assistant director for public services since 2001, managing law library public services and coordinating the advanced legal research courses.
Prior to joining the staff at UNC Law, Childs served as head of reference at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and was both a reference librarian and headed the collection development at Cornell Law School.
Professor Childs began his legal career with the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama, serving as a Staff Attorney and then as a Senior Staff Attorney until 1995.
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
Having personally experienced the incalculable consequences of identifying a driving purpose in his life, Assistant Interim Dean Brad Morgan cherishes the opportunities in both his professional and personal life to assist others in identifying their values and goals, recognizing their strengths, and moving forward with intentionality.
Assistant Dean Morgan is a UT Law alumnus. He has extensive an legal background with strong ties to the legal community, and he is an expert in leadership and pro bono initiatives. He joined the College of Law in 2010 as the mentoring and Access to Justice coordinator and later served as the director of the Bettye B. Lewis Career Center.
A frequent speaker and occasional author, he looks for moments of shared dialogue and learning, believing that every interaction affords the occasion to walk away a better person than before. Having grown up in New Mexico, he believes that the correct answer to the question “red or green chile?” is almost always green.
Assistant Dean for Finance, Administration, and Operations
David Price joined the College of Law in July 2022 and oversees the College of Law business office.
An alumnus of the University of Tennessee (’03) and the Nashville School of Law, Price has more than 18 years of experience in administration and finance operations with more than 14 of those years in higher education. He was previously the assistant director of the financial information office with the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business.
He has also worked in UT’s Office of Budget and Finance and with the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor.