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 Hirendra and Meena Roy, in honor of Hirendra’s parents, 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 built a national reputation in representing the defendants of the Deoghar case, where revolutionary group members were arbitrarily targeted and persecuted by the British, resulting in a friendship with India’s first president Dr. Rajendra Prasad. 

Because of their strong ties to Champaign and an affinity for the University of Illinois, Hirendra and Meena Roy established the Lall professorship in honor of Hirendra’s parents. The Roys were intimately involved in running a surgical practice near Champaign where they offered clinical excellence in a rural and often underserved population. They were delighted to have two grandchildren graduate from Illinois and frequently took advantage of the world-class offerings at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.   

Facilitated by siblings Hemant Roy and Ruby Busse, the gift is a nod to the advocacy and integrity that defined the lives of their parents and grandparents. The family is proud to support the legacy of exceptional scholarship produced at Illinois with a tenured professorship in their name.