Michelle Zakarin - Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Legal Process

Michelle Zakarin serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Legal Process. Dean Zakarin is a 1995 graduate of Touro Law and has been a Professor of Legal Process since 2003. As an active alumna and as a respected faculty member, she brings with her the institutional knowledge and acumen that will positively impact the entire Touro community, including present and former students, faculty and administration. Dean Zakarin frequently presents on emerging issues related to legal writing, as well in the cybercrime area. During her tenure as Associate Dean, she will continue her role in the classroom.

 

Dean Zakarin is an avid proponent of applying technology in the classroom, which benefits both students and faculty alike. She is currently authoring a legal writing textbook utilizing Open Educational Resources (OER) that will be hosted on an online platform rather than published in a traditional hard copy format, allowing students and faculty to access materials at no cost. Zakarin is the recipient of both the American Legal Writing Directors Teaching Grant and the Touro University OER Fellowship to allow her to continue her work in this area. She has also presented nationally on this topic for the American Association of Law Schools to introduce her work to fellow law professors and administrators. In addition, she authored a book chapter in Millennial Leadership in Law Schools. Her chapter is titled, The Importance of Feedback, and it discusses, among other things, the use of technology to provide feedback. Dean Zakarin has served as the Co-chair of the Conference/Program Committee for the AALS Section on Technology/Law/Education and she has presented at various academic conferences about the use of technology to provide meaningful feedback to students.

 

Dean Zakarin has been teaching legal process since 2003 and, in 2010 she proposed and developed the course Cybercrime which she has been teaching since its adoption. With an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, she combined her interest in technology with her interest in the law by creating this popular elective course. She has written and presented extensively on the intersection of technology and the law. Her latest article, published in 2022, is Requiring What’s Not Required: Circuit Courts Are Disregarding Supreme Court Precedent and Revisiting Officer Inadvertence in Cyberlaw Cases. It explores the way courts treat officer inadvertence as a requirement despite the United States Supreme Court ruling no longer requiring it in plain view searches. She has appeared on the Touro Law Center radio show, On the Docket, to discuss and answer questions about the United States Supreme Court case Riley v. California that ruled on whether cell phones found incident to a lawful arrest may be searched without a warrant.