Long before I was a law professor, I was an organizer. I spent time on picket lines, at the bargaining table, and in the homes of working people discussing their daily struggles. That experience gave me an up-close understanding of how the law shapes workers\u2019 lives and where it falls short. It\u2019s what brought me to law school and eventually to academia, and it\u2019s a perspective I bring to every course I teach.<\/p>\n
A bit about me. I began my legal career as a Skadden Fellow providing bilingual legal services at the intersection of employment and consumer law. From there, I clerked for Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge James Graves before advocating for workers and their unions at a private firm, in-house at a nurses\u2019 union, and at the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Since becoming a full-time professor, I\u2019ve taught at NYU Law School and Loyola Law School Los Angeles, and I\u2019m a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law. I\u2019m overjoyed to now be at Temple, a school whose public interest work and roots in Philadelphia\u2014a union town\u2014make it a natural home for my work.<\/p>\n
My scholarship focuses on the ways employers use debt, contracts, and credentialing requirements to restrict worker mobility. My research on Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAPs) has brought national attention to the practice of requiring workers to repay thousands of dollars in purported \u201ctraining\u201d costs if they leave their jobs. It has been cited by the FTC, NLRB, and CFPB. More importantly, it sparked a movement to end abusive TRAPs and other \u201cstay-or-pay\u201d contracts, leading to both California and New York banning them in 2025. With the assistance of several Temple student research assistants, I\u2019m now completing a series of articles examining stay-or-pay contracts through the lenses of contract law, consumer protection law, labor law, and the Thirteenth Amendment right to \u201cfree labor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now is the most exciting time in my adult life for the field of labor and employment law! As law graduates and practitioners, you\u2019ll be getting work law questions for the rest of your careers. I certainly recommend taking at least one course in the area. But let me unpack the field a bit, because the terminology can be confusing. \u201cLabor Law\u201d refers to the law of workers\u2019 collective rights to organize, collective bargaining, strikes, and the National Labor Relations Act. \u201cEmployment Law\u201d covers individual workers\u2019 issues, such as at-will employment, employee\/independent contractor (i.e. \u201cgig\u201d worker) status, wage-and-hour laws, worker privacy, employment contracts, non-competes, and health and safety. \u201cEmployment Discrimination\u201d focuses on individual worker protections against discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, disability, religion, age, and other characteristics under statutes like Title VII and the ADA. These courses ask different questions. Labor Law asks: how do workers build collective power? Employment Law asks: what does the law guarantee each individual worker? And Employment Discrimination asks: when has the law been broken because of who the worker is?<\/p>\n
As a teacher, I try to convey that these are not abstract doctrinal puzzles. They are the legal architecture that governs people\u2019s paychecks, their safety at work, and their ability to leave a bad job or challenge an unfair one. Whether you plan to represent unions, advise companies on compliance, work at a government agency, or litigate civil rights claims, this field offers intellectually rich and professionally rewarding career paths. And I find it personally rewarding to open my national network of practitioners to students who are seeking internships, clerkships, and post-graduate jobs in the field.<\/p>\n
This Fall 2026 semester, I\u2019ll teach Labor Law and plan to feature numerous guests who are setting national labor policy (last year, I hosted the NLRB General Counsel as a guest lecturer). With resurgent union activism combined with the rise of AI in the workplace, now is an especially fascinating time to study Labor Law. I also teach Employment Law and Professor Rangel-Medina teaches Employment Discrimination.<\/p>\n
There are also opportunities beyond the classroom. The Peggy Browning Fund offers paid summer fellowships that place law students with unions, worker centers, and union-side firms across the country. Temple students have received these prestigious fellowships and I\u2019m happy to help interested students apply. I also encourage students to join bar associations, most of which offer free or discounted student memberships. These include the ABA Labor and Employment Law Section, Philly Labor and Employment Relations Association, National Employment Lawyers Association (for worker-side employment lawyers), Pennsylvania Bar Labor and Employment Law Section, and Philadelphia Bar Association Labor & Employment Law Committee.<\/p>\n
One of my goals is to build Temple\u2019s national profile in labor and employment law. Philadelphia is a city with a deep labor history and the Temple University Press has a national reputation for publishing titles in labor studies. With faculty members like Dean Jennifer Lee, Professor Evelyn Rangel-Medina, and myself, we\u2019re well positioned to become a place that practitioners, policymakers, and scholars think of as a center of expertise in this area. If any of this sounds interesting, take a class or stop by my office. I\u2019m in Klein Hall 809.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Long before I was a law professor, I was an organizer. I spent time on picket lines, at the bargaining table, and in the homes of working people discussing their daily struggles. That experience gave me an up-close understanding of how the law shapes workers\u2019 lives and where it falls short. It\u2019s what brought me to law school and eventually to academia, and it\u2019s a perspective I bring to every course I teach. A bit about me. I began my legal career as a Skadden Fellow providing bilingual legal services at the intersection of employment and consumer law. From there, I clerked for Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge James Graves before advocating for workers and their unions at a private firm, in-house at a nurses\u2019 union, and at the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Since becoming a full-time professor, I\u2019ve taught at NYU Law School and Loyola Law School Los Angeles, and I\u2019m a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law. I\u2019m …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":8036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"audience":[],"coauthors":[1094],"class_list":["post-8033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-commentary"],"yoast_head":"\r\n