Tyler Dougherty
Director, Community Law Clinic; Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Email: [[tedougherty]]
Office location: Room 187
Representative Professional Activities and Achievements
Tyler E. Dougherty is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and the founding Director of William & Mary’s Community Law Clinic (CLC).
Professor Dougherty brings a community lawyering approach to the CLC, where under Dougherty’s supervision, students represent low-income Hampton Roads residents in housing, family law, and reentry matters. In addition to its direct client representation, the clinic also takes on projects to build power with traditionally marginalized groups and democratize legal systems.
Prior to joining William & Mary Law School, Professor Dougherty was the inaugural clinical teaching fellow at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, where she taught and supervised students in the Advocacy Clinic. She was also an adjunct professor and attorney in the Rutgers Criminal & Youth Justice Clinic, where she provided holistic representation to incarcerated young people and partnered with organized youth on statewide juvenile legal system advocacy. Previously, she worked as a Maida Fellow in the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, representing young people who had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms as children.
Dougherty’s current scholarship investigates how criminal law, political economy, and democracy intersect to affect decision-making about criminal and juvenile legal institutions. Her first article, Carceral Bonds, was published in the Lewis & Clark Law Review.
Students are welcome to reach out to Professor Dougherty to discuss launching legal careers in the public interest. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Rutgers-Newark Law School, where she was the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter and received the Judge J. Skelly Wright prize.
Scholarly Publications
Articles and Book Chapters
- Carceral Bonds, 29 Lewis & Clark Review 459 (2025). Online.