Investiture of Sarah B. Lawsky as the L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law

The University of Illinois College of Law will celebrate the investiture of 

Sarah B. Lawsky as the 
L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law
Tuesday, October 13
12 pm

Remote attendees may join the ceremony live at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77T0YGFeugc

Free and open to the campus community; a reception will immediately follow in the Peer and Sarah Pedersen Pavilion.

Sarah B. Lawsky, the L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law, studies tax law, computational law, and the intersection of the two. Her recent work focuses on the formalization of tax law. Professor Lawsky’s research arguing for using a particular nonstandard logic to formalize tax law is the conceptual foundation for the domain-specific programming language Catala, which is the project of a team of computer scientists and lawyers.

Before joining the University of Illinois, Professor Lawsky taught at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, UC Irvine School of Law, and George Washington University Law School. Before entering academia, she worked as a tax lawyer for large law firms. Professor Lawsky holds a PhD from University of California - Irvine, a JD from Yale Law School, an LLM from NYU School of Law, and an AB from the University of Chicago.

About the L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law

The L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law was made possible thanks to a generous donation from Hemant K. Roy and Ruby Busse, in honor of their grandparents, Sri Lal Bihari Lal and Sumitra Devi.

Residents of Patna, Bihar, one of the poorest states of India, their lives were shaped by the politics of Indian Independence. Sumitra Devi was a woman of strength and integrity, raising five children during the chaos of revolution and making sure they all received a college education. Sri Lal Bihari Lal was a Gold Medalist solicitor of Biha. When offered the post of Magistrate, he turned it down, preferring to work as a defense lawyer for Indians persecuted by the Raj. He received a national reputation in representing the defendants of the Deoghar Bomb Blast case and became friends with the first president Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Ruby and Hemant are proud to honor their grandparents with a tenured professorship in their name, as a nod to the advocacy and integrity that defined their lives.