Stephanie McMahon | Rethinking Law School Curriculum

Legal Tenzer: Casual Conversations on Noteworthy Legal Topics

In This Episode...

Professor Stephanie McMahon explains why law schools should flip the traditional model of law school learning, suggesting that second-year students should engage in more “field work” such as externships and clinics, saving the third year for the kind of doctrinal courses that are necessary to pass the bar. It’s a compelling argument, and I am not a convert to her theory!

About Our Guest...

Professor Stephanie Hunter McMahon has taught courses in tax law and legal history at the University of Cincinnati College of Law since 2008, and while doing so has won two of the law school’s teaching awards, its faculty excellence award, and its award for scholarship. To date, much of her scholarship explores the relationship between taxation and the public’s perception of taxation with respect to families and the application of administrative law to tax. Her interest in the development of tax policy led her to write Principles of Tax Policy for West’s Concise Hornbook Series. In the last two years, she has begun scholarship focusing on the tax treatment of disadvantaged groups, both women seeking abortions in states that do not provide access to care and the discriminatory tax treatment of inmate labor.

Her writings have been published in peer-reviewed journals, The Tax Lawyer (ABA journal), Florida Tax Review, and the Virginia Tax Review, as well as student-reviewed journals, such as Northwestern Law Review, Washington Law Review, and Michigan State Law Review. Professor McMahon received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and PhD in American history from the University of Virginia. Following law school, Professor McMahon practiced in the New York offices of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.