FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Associate professor Laurent Sacharoff has been named the 2017 Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law.

University of Arkansas School of Law faculty members are selected for this honor based on outstanding teaching and excellence in scholarship in Arkansas law. During their one-year appointments, Arkansas Bar Foundation Professors are expected to contribute to the legal profession in Arkansas by building strong relationships between the faculty and state's bench and bar.

"Professor Sacharoff is an incredible asset to the Law School and the community," said Stacy Leeds, dean of the law school. "His research is regularly cited by legal scholars nationally, he is dynamic in the classroom, and he engages in legal issues in the broader community."

Sacharoff's research interests include criminal law and procedure, computer law, and encryption. His works have appeared in the Texas Law Review, Alabama Law Review, and Washington University Law Review. His scholarship has been cited by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and in treatises including LaFave's Criminal Procedure and The New Wingmore: A Treatise on Evidence.

He teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, cybercrime and international criminal law and periodically teaches criminal law during the summer at Brooklyn Law School. In addition to his university commitments, Sacharoff also serves as the reporter to the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Criminal Practice.

In 2016, he received the Arkansas Alumni Association Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award for Rising-Teaching and the 2016 School of Law graduating class honored him with the Lewis E. Epley, Jr. Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. The Southeastern Association of Law School named him the 2011 Call-for-Papers Winner.

Sacharoff joined the University of Arkansas faculty in 2010. Before that, he taught at Temple Law School as an Abraham L. Freedman fellow. Prior to academia, he served as a public defender at the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, New York, was the pro-bono fellow handling prison litigation at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm and clerked for the Hon. John S. Martin, Jr. in the Southern District of New York.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton University a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Faculty members who have previously served as the Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law include Carl J. Circo, Uché Ewelukwa Ofodile, Carol R. Goforth, Robert B. Leflar, Philip E. Norvell and John J. Watkins.