Zoe E. Niesel

Biography

Zoe Niesel, J.D., previously served as the Albert Herrmann Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the St. Mary’s University School of Law. In Fall 2025, she joined the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina.

Niesel now serves as Affiliate Faculty at St. Mary’s Law. She is teaching AI Management in Law and Compliance.

Her legal scholarship focuses on civil procedure, federal court jurisdiction and conflict of laws. In her scholarship, she examines difficult issues of civil and administrative procedure and how procedural concepts are challenged by advanced technology. Her work has been published in the Indiana Law Journal, Cardozo Law Review, SMU Law Review, and George Mason Law Review, among others.

Niesel began her teaching career as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Wake Forest University, where she taught classes in Civil Procedure, Complex Commercial Litigation and Transnational Litigation. In addition to her experience in academia, she previously clerked for the Hon. Thomas D. Schroder, U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina, and spent time in private practice as an associate attorney in the area of complex commercial litigation.

Niesel received her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Southern Methodist University, and her law degree, summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University School of Law.

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Articles

• Machine Intelligence and the New Civil Procedure, 73 SMU Law Review (2020).
• Putting Poverty Law into Context: Using the First Year Experience to Educate New Lawyers for Social Change, 76 NYU Annual Survey of American Law, 2020
• Terrible Touhy: Navigating Judicial Review of an Agency’s Response to Third-Party Subpoenas, 41 Cardozo Law Review, April 2020
• #PersonalJurisdiction: A New Age of Internet Contacts, 94 Indiana Law Journal 103, 116-38, 2019
• The Knottiest Problem: Unraveling Arising Under Jurisdiction in Copyright Cases, 23 George Mason Law Review, March 2016, with Bethany Corbin
• Daimler and the Jurisdictional Triskelion, 82 Tennessee Law Review
• Collateral Damage: Protecting Cultural Heritage in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Wake Forest Law Review Online, 2014
• King Tut and Tahrir Square: The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and the Advantage of Viewing Cultural Heritage Destruction through a Right to Culture Lens, 20 Southwestern Journal of International Law 283, 2014
• Comment, Better Late Than Never? The Effect of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act’s 2010 Regulations, 46 Wake Forest Law Review 837, 2011

Books

• Legal Research Guide: Patterns and Practice, Carolina Academic Press, 8th Edition, 2019, with Linda Schlueter