Sophie Sparrow

Sophie M. Sparrow, Professor of Law, University of New Hampshire School of Law, is nationally recognized as an innovative and expert leader in legal education. She focuses her research and scholarship on teaching and learning in law, and has authored or co-authored multiple articles, essays, and seven books, including Teaching Law By Design for Adjuncts (2nd Edition 2017), Teaching Law By Design (2ndEdition 2017), Working Together in Law (2014), What the Best Law Teachers Do (2013), and Techniques for Teaching Law 2 (2011). She has conducted over 100 workshops for professors, administrators, lawyers, and judges in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, India, Bhutan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan on topics such as active learning, team-based learning, assessment, metacognition, professionalism, professional development, legal education, and legal writing.

UNH Law Students voted Sophie Sparrow as the 2018 Teacher of the Year, and in 2018 UNH awarded her the university-wide three-year Class of 1938 Professorship Award, which recognizes a UNH faculty member for excellence in teaching. Sparrow won the Inaugural Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching Professionalism in 2004, taught as a Fulbright Scholar in India in 2012, and has conducted teacher-training programs overseas for the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative since 2014. An innovator since she started teaching law in 1998, Professor designed and ran UNH School Law’s writing program for ten years (1998-2008) and helped design UNH Law’s Daniel Webster Scholar Program, an alternative bar exam program integrated into UNH Law's second and third year curriculum. She was one of the founding members of Arizona Summit (formerly Phoenix) School of Law (2005-2006), and was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in spring, 2016, and The John Marshall School of Law in spring, 2012.

To her teaching, Professor Sparrow brings her experience practicing law, directing the UNH School of Law’s Career Services Center and teaching students ages 5 to 60. She learned about the transformative strategy of team-based learning a few years ago, and now uses it in her Torts and Remedies courses. Before joining UNH Law, she worked as a staff attorney for New Hampshire Legal Assistance and as an associate with a New Hampshire law firm. Her best teachers are her two children.