In this episode, we speak with Kelly Salefski, who was named Assistant Dean of Academic Administration and Dean of Students in June. She shared a great deal about what the College of Law is doing to help students achieve their goals, as well as her plans to improve our services and how her background helps her to do great things for our students.

Few individuals are as dedicated to Illinois as Salefski. A double Illini, graduating with an undergraduate degree in integrative biology in 2002 and JD in 2005, she began her career at the College of Law right after taking the bar exam, serving initially as Assistant Director of Academic and Student Administration. Over the past twenty years, Kelly has continued her work with students, leading to her most recent position as Senior Director of Academic Administration and Student Records.

Known to students for her work in academic counseling and an always friendly presence in the Law Building, Salefski has a strong commitment to helping make Illinois more than just a place to earn a degree and is eager to foster success in the student body. Evident by her tenure at the College of Law, Kelly has deep affection for the University of Illinois and the surrounding community, where she has proudly raised her family.

In this episode we speak with our two newest full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty, Eric Baudry and Sarah Lawsky. They shared about themselves, their research, and what they are looking forward to as members of the College of Law faculty.

About Eric Baudry:

Eric Baudry is an assistant professor of law at the University of Illinois, where he teaches and writes about tax law, poverty, and redistribution. He is especially interested in the experiences of low-income taxpayers as subjects of and actors within the institution of the United States tax system. His scholarship has appeared in the Columbia Journal of Tax Law.

Following law school, Baudry clerked on the Eastern District of Michigan and the Ninth Circuit, provided wage theft and tax representation for low-wage workers as a Skadden Fellow at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, and spent two years as a Faculty Fellow at the University of Michigan law school.

About Sarah Lawsky:

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.

For more information, visit the personal website of Professor Lawsky: https://www.sarahlawsky.org/

A 2008 graduate of the College of Law, Josh Whitman joins the podcast to discuss decision to pursue a law degree, his time as a student, and how he navigated his way back to Illinois and the role of athletic director. He expands on some of the challenges he faces as one of the University's highest profile employees and how he strives to be successful and fights complacency.

About Josh Whitman:

Josh Whitman was hired as University of Illinois Director of Athletics on February 17, 2016. In his 10th year, Whitman has elevated Fighting Illini Athletics to a place among the nation's elite programs. In 2024-25, Illinois earned a No. 31 final ranking in the Learfield Directors’ Cup, the program’s highest finish in the last 10 years, and the Illini football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball programs all were ranked in the Top 25 at the same time. Also in 2024-25, women’s track and field recorded a pair of top-10 national finishes, volleyball returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021, men’s golf won its seventh NCAA Regional championship, wrestling placed 10th nationally, and men’s gymnastics finished sixth. In all, 16 Illini programs participated in postseason competition. Individually, wrestler Lucas Byrd claimed the national championship at 133 lbs.

In total during Whitman’s tenure, Illinois teams have made 110 NCAA postseason appearances, finishing in the top 16 nationally 31 times, and nine student-athletes have captured 11 individual national championships. Illinois has also captured a total of 16 Big Ten titles under Whitman. Under his leadership, Illinois is amid eight consecutive fiscal years of recording more than $30 million in new gift commitments. In September, Whitman announced the largest donation in the history of the athletics program when Larry Gies contributed $100 million for the naming rights of Gies Memorial Stadium.

Whitman played four years of football at Illinois and earned two Illinois degrees: graduating with Bronze Tablet honors in 2001 while earning a bachelor’s degree in finance, and graduating summa cum laude from the College of Law in 2008. Whitman is married to Hope, and they have two children. The Whitmans are active in several Champaign-Urbana community organizations.

We kick off season two with an engrossing conversation with Professor Robert Lawless about his new book, Debt's Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy. The book explores financial precarity in the United States and utilizes original data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, including the words of bankruptcy filers themselves to shed light on their situations. Professor Lawless shared insight into how he began his work on this project, how the book came about, and how the research has helped him as a teacher at Illinois Law.

For more information about Debt's Grip, including ways to purchase the book, please visit the publisher's website: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/debts-grip/paper

Bobby Mannis and Vindy Murthy, 2025 graduates, join the podcast to discuss their artificial intelligence-powered learning tool, NomosLearning. They share some background on how their education at Illinois inspired the building of this tool and how they came together to create a tool that all Illinois students can use. NomosLearning harnesses the power of AI to supplement reading for students, creating issue spotters and case briefs to guide their studies. The co-founders also share some of their vision for the future of NomosLearning and their careers.

To learn more, visit https://www.nomoslearning.com/.

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement or approval by the College of Law. Please contact Nomos Learning for answers to questions regarding its content.

Studying the law at the University of Illinois doesn't always mean being in Illinois. In this episode, third-year student Rama Hamad shares her experience studying abroad in Madrid, Spain, and how the chance to study internationally has helped her on her path to being an outstanding lawyer. In the second half of the episode, Rebecca Ray, assistant director for Graduate and International Studies, fills in some of the specifics about the study abroad program and how it works for Illinois Law students.

If you are interested in studying abroad, you can contact Rebecca Ray and the graduate and international programs office at [email protected].

This episode is all about advocacy and what that means for law students and lawyers. We turn the spotlight on the Kimball R. and Karen Gatsis Anderson Center for Advocacy and Professionalism and learn about the classes and competitions they offer to help Illinois Law students become the best advocates possible. Guests include Professor Tony Ghiotto, director of the Anderson Center, and third-year students Yev Kozak and Nicole Marcinkus.

Juan Thomas has found great success in the legal world and in politics since graduating from Illinois Law in 1996, and now he is taking the time to give back by teaching The History of the African-American Lawyer in the United States. We talked about his path to the law and why he is passionate about sharing Black history with a new generation of students.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed the law banning TikTok from the United States was constitutional and should go into effect as written; however, on January 20th, President Donald Trump instructed the Attorney General not to enforce the law for 75 days. So, what is going on and what is the legal basis for any of it? Professor Lena Shapiro, who also leads our First Amendment Clinic Director, joined us for a bonus episode of the podcast to examine the details behind this case.

In this episode, Assistant Director of Athletics, Strategic Initiatives Kamron Cox joins to talk about his journey through the law to the University of Illinois Athletics Department. When he was hired for his role with the Fighting Illini, Kam was the first specialist in name, image, and likeness law among Power 5 schools. He shared how he has traversed the changing landscape of college athletics to help the Illini find success on many different fields, and how he uses that knowledge in the classroom as an adjunct professor at the College of Law.