While 2023-24 may represent the first official year of Michael Dube’s career as a full-time academic, the inaugural Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) is no rookie.
Dube joined the UNH Franklin Pierce community in 2015 as an adjunct professor, teaching Amateur Sports Law. He continued in that capacity until last year, when he became a VAP in a teaching-only role, which included being named the co-recipient of the students’ teaching award. This fall, Dube will again serve as VAP, but will focus on both teaching and scholarship.
“I’m incredibly thankful to the administration, as well as my colleagues on the faculty, for their support of this new program,” says Dube, a 2002 graduate of Rutgers Law School. “My aim is to further develop my classroom teaching skills and begin to influence legal thinking through scholarship.”
The VAP program provides aspiring law professors time to experience teaching at the law school level, an opportunity to write in a scholarly environment, and a better glimpse into the work life of a law professor before pursuing a full-time academic career.
As a practitioner, Dube spent the majority of his time working on complex civil litigation, clinical trials litigation, and matters involving sports law. In a legal career that has spanned two decades, Dube was most recently of counsel at Sherman Silverstein Kohl Rose & Podolsky in Moorestown, New Jersey. Among the highlights of his career has been the “privilege of representing and seeking justice for individuals from around the country who participated in clinical research and alleged that they had suffered serious personal injuries.” Dube also was part of a team instrumental in convincing the courts to recognize a lack of informed consent cause of action against drug companies and other sponsors of clinical trials based on FDA and HHS regulations.
As a sports fan, Dube also has enjoyed the chance to represent — and occasionally litigate against — top professional and amateur athletes. He looks forward to teaching Amateur Sports Law, Civil Procedure, and Drug Law at UNH Franklin Pierce in addition to developing new course offerings.
“I have a great interest in the legal framework undergirding sports betting,” he adds, “and would love to help develop a residential course on the subject, perhaps one called Modern Gaming Law.”
Outside of his legal and academic careers, Dube is a prolific songwriter, who has written several musicals, including one about fraudulent conveyances.
“Only a lawyer,” he says, “could write, or enjoy, such a musical.”
On the scholarship side, Dube looks forward to continuing his work on a law review article relating to the enforceability of parental releases in youth sports. “I like to say that a release is a contractual answer to a torts question that must be asserted in a procedurally appropriate manner,” Dube notes, “so releases are germane to some of the major areas covered in the first semester of law school.” He also recently started work on a piece (The LIV Golf v. PGA Tour Antitrust Case as a Case Study in Federal Civil Procedure) that he plans to assign to Civil Procedure students.
“Professor Dube already has shown his acumen for teaching at the law school,” Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Rebecca Purdom says. “He has demonstrated a gift for both doctrinal and specialty courses, residential, and online courses. We’re excited to see what he brings as a Visiting Assistant Professor, both as a talented teacher and a thoughtful scholar.”
The law school’s VAP program expects to invite applications for additional positions in the coming year.
