Carolyn Williams

Biography

Professor Carolyn Williams is a nationally recognized leader in the legal writing community. She has played a central role in shaping the future of legal education, serving as a subject-matter expert in legal research for the National Conference of Bar Examiners in developing the NextGen Bar Exam and as a member of the North Dakota Supreme Court’s NextGen Bar Subcommittee.

Professor Williams's work reflects a consistent focus on innovation in legal writing—whether through scholarship, teaching resources, or convening national conversations on AI in the classroom. Her scholarship focuses on critical reading, generative AI, learning disabilities, and andragogy, and she serves on the editorial boards of both the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process and Legal Writing: the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. In May 2023, she co-founded the Legal Writing and Generative AI Convo Group, which now includes more than 500 law professors nationwide who meet monthly to explore issues surrounding AI in legal education. Professor Williams is the author of the 7th edition of the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation and a contributing author to A Manual for Law Review Editors. Drawing on her research in critical reading, West Academic invited her to design three interactive video modules for its Interactive Legal Research & Writing Lessons: A Modular Approach series. A longtime proponent of team-based learning, Professor Williams received a Teaching Grant from the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) to develop innovative team-based learning materials, which she has presented to legal writing faculty across the country and which have since been adopted by other programs.

Her professional service has been recognized at the highest levels. She was elected Director and Treasurer of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), the world’s largest legal writing organization, and received the 2024 President’s Distinguished Service Award for her leadership as Treasurer and as Co-Chair of LWI’s two most recent Biennial Conferences. Since 2017, she has been a key member of the ALWD Guide Task Force, earning the 2025 ALWD Outstanding Service Award for her work on the ALWD Guide. At the University of North Dakota School of Law, she received the 2023–24 Randy H. Lee Faculty Teaching Award and was named the 2025 Association of American Law Schools Teacher of the Year for UND.

Before joining academia, Professor Williams practiced for eight years at a large law firm, where she focused on complex commercial litigation involving land use, development, and financial institutions. Her excellence in practice earned her recognition as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers in 2016, an honor awarded to no more than 2.5 percent of attorneys in each state.

Professor Williams earned her J.D. from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. There, she served as Editor in Chief of the Arizona State Law Journal, chaired the Moot Court Board in both her 2L and 3L years, and worked as a teaching assistant in legal research and writing.