Biography

Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed Stuart D. Alcorn, J.D., to begin hearing cases as a United States Immigration Judge in August 2018. He will retire at the end of 2025 after nearly 32 years in federal service.

From 2008 to 2018, Alcorn served as Assistant Chief Counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security in San Antonio, Texas. He was assigned the additional duty of a Special Assistant United States Attorney in Brownsville, Texas, from 2010 to 2012. From 2008 to 2017, he also served as a military defense attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, U.S. Army Reserve. Prior to his reserve time, he was a military prosecutor and command judge advocate in the JAG Corps at Fort Benning, Georgia from 2005 to 2008.

In addition to military duties, he served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Columbus, Georgia. In 2004, he was a law clerk for former United States Attorney Ron Woods’ legal practice in Houston. From 2002 to 2004, he was a student clerk in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston. Prior to law school, Judge Alcorn served as a United States Border Patrol Agent in the Laredo, Texas, Sector. He was also an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army from 1988 to 1991, and he was stationed in Fulda, West Germany, when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunited. Alcorn is a member of the State Bar of Texas.

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Biography

Matthew Aaron Ford, J.D., is a partner at Ford O’Brien Landy LLP, where he represents clients in complex criminal and civil matters, with a focus on white-collar criminal defense, regulatory enforcement, and securities and cyber-fraud litigation. Drawing on extensive experience in both federal and state courts, Ford is known for his ability to translate intricate legal and factual issues into clear, persuasive advocacy that achieves favorable results for his clients.

Ford’s representative matters include securing a full acquittal for a hedge fund CFO after a nine-week federal jury trial, obtaining dismissal of a $17 million federal “pump and dump” indictment, and achieving vacatur of multi-million-dollar disgorgement and judgment awards in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also represented clients in high-stakes SEC enforcement actions, health care fraud prosecutions, and internal investigations involving cyber-fraud and fiduciary misconduct.

Before joining Ford O’Brien Landy LLP, Ford practiced at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, where he was part of teams representing major financial institutions and corporate executives in complex commercial and securities litigation. His work included a favorable settlement exceeding $20 million in an executive compensation dispute and the successful defense of multi-billion-dollar securities fraud cases arising from the 2008 financial crisis.

Ford earned his J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law, where he served as an editor of the St. John’s Law Review, and his B.A. from The Evergreen State College, concentrating in philosophy and economics.

Outside of his legal practice, Ford is an accomplished musician and visual artist, performing and recording as a studio musician, practicing traditional film photography, and painting in oil and watercolor.

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Honors and Awards

• Selected to Rising Stars by Super Lawyers, 2020 – 2024

Biography

Willie Hernandez, J.D. has nearly 30 years of executive leadership and general counsel experience protecting and growing global public companies in increasingly complex regulatory and geopolitical environments.

In 2025 he joined Gartner Inc. to launch a general counsel advisory practice where he leads a team of former general counsels that partner with current general counsel in developing strategies that elevate their impact as executive leaders and transform and modernize their legal functions for the future.
Prior to Gartner, Hernandez served as the International General Counsel at The Coca-Cola Company where he was responsible for all legal support across 200 countries and territories during a period of significant regulatory and geopolitical disruption.

He joined Coca-Cola after 25 years holding executive roles at global technology companies – IBM, Amazon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Meta Platforms – where he helped guide them through both periods of significant growth as well as turn-around and transformation.
Hernandez has substantial international experience. After starting his practice leading the negotiations of global commercial transactions that spanned 100-plus countries, he moved to Shanghai, China, in 2008 to serve as general counsel for IBM across Asia-Pacific and other growth markets.
Following his time in Asia, his subsequent roles were international in scope, including leading legal teams and advising business clients through ever-increasing regulatory complexity across every continent.
Hernandez received his B.S. at UC Berkeley and J.D. at UCLA School of Law.

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Honors and Awards

• The Legends in Law Award, The Burton Awards, 2025

Biography

Retired Justice Paul W. Green (J.D. ’77) is a San Antonio, Texas, native and third generation lawyer. Upon graduation from St. Mary’s Law in 1977, he joined his father’s mid-sized San Antonio law firm and practiced civil litigation as an AV-rated lawyer until he was elected as a Justice of the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals, an intermediate state appellate court based in San Antonio, in 1994.

In 2004, Green was elected as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas and served on the Court until he retired in 2020. After retirement from the Court, he joined the law firm of Alexander Dubose and Jefferson, primarily representing parties with cases on appeal.

He is also a panel member of the American Arbitration Association serving as an arbitrator/mediator. He is retiring from the practice of law at the end of 2025 but will continue to accept assignments as an arbitrator or mediator. At St. Mary’s Law, Green is teaching the course Inside the Supreme Court of Texas.

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Honors and Awards

• President, San Antonio Bar Association, 1991-1992
• Member, House of Delegates, American Bar Association, 1992-1994
• Director, State Bar of Texas, 1992-1994
• Elected Member, American Law Institute
• Rosewood Gavel Award, St. Mary’s University School of Law
• Distinguished Law Graduate, St. Mary’s University School of Law
• Life Fellow, San Antonio, Austin, Texas and American Bar Foundations

Biography

Patricia Moore, J.D., began her career as an attorney (first an associate and then a partner) in the litigation department of a large law firm in Chicago, where she practiced law for more than a decade. She then joined the legal academy. Over the course of her academic career, Moore has taught in five law schools in three states. She has been tenured as a full Professor of Law in three of those law schools, including St. Mary’s, and also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in two of those law schools.

Moore’s legal scholarship has focused on how the rules of civil procedure, the demographics of the federal courts, and the influence of large institutional litigants hamper access to justice and undercut the private regulation function served by civil litigation. Her work has been published in law journals of the University of Illinois, the University of Pennsylvania, American University and many others.

She has taught many courses over her career, but her core classes relate to litigation and include Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, Evidence, and Complex Litigation. She also enjoys teaching LL.M. students in Introduction to American Legal System.

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Honors and Awards

• Phi Beta Kappa, 1980
• Joseph Henry Beale Prize, University of Chicago Law School, 1981
• Order of the Coif, University of Chicago Law School, 1983
• Professor of the Year, Oklahoma City University School of Law, 1997 and 1998
• Academic Fellow, National Civil Justice Institute, 2016

Books

• The First Year of the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: Refinement, Not Revolution, American Association for Justice, 2017
• Oklahoma Trial Practice, Thomson West, 1999 (with John Morris and Daniel Morgan)
  

Law Review Articles

• Can Litigation Analytics Tell Us What Became of the 2015 Proportionality Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure?, 9 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Public Affairs, IRS 298 (2024), https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jlpa/vol9/iss3/1/
• Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins: The Illusory “No-Injury” Class Reaches the Supreme Court, 2 St. Thomas Journal of Complex Litigation 1 (2015), chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.stthomasjournalofcomplexlitigation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Moore-Article-Final.pdf, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2690371
• The Anti-Plaintiff Pending Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Pro-Defendant Composition of the Federal Rulemaking Committees, 83 University of Cincinnati Law Review 1083 (2015), https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/uclr/vol83/iss4/2/
• The Civil Caseload of the Federal District Courts, 2015 U. Illinois Law Review 1177, https://illinoislawreview.org/print/volume-2015-issue-3/the-civil-caseload-of-the-federal-district-courts/
• Confronting the Myth of “State Court Class Action Abuses” Through an Understanding of Heuristics and a Plea for More Statistics, 82 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 133 (2013), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2238174#
• An Updated Quantitative Study of Iqbal’s Impact on 12(b)(6) Motions, 46 University of Richmond Law Review 603 (2012), https://scholarship.richmond.edu/lawreview/vol46/iss2/6/
• Active Learning and Law School Performance (with Todd Sullivan), 3 Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, No. 2, 67 (2011), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1876246
• The Tao of Pleading: Do Twombly and Iqbal Matter Empirically?, 59 American University Law Review 553 (2010), https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/aulr/vol59/iss3/2/
• The Effect of “Tort Reform” on Tort Case Filings, 43 Valparaiso University Law Review 559 (2009), https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol43/iss2/3/
• Are Women More Ethical Lawyers? An Empirical Study, 31 Florida State University Law Review 785 (2004) (with Kevin Simmons), https://ir.law.fsu.edu/lr/vol31/iss4/2/
• Interstate Establishment, Enforcement, and Modification of Child Support Orders, 25 Oklahoma City University Law Review 511 (2000), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1285903
• Critical Applications and Proposals for Improvement of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act and the Federal Full Faith and Credit for Child Support Orders Act, 71 St. John’s Law Review 1 (1997), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1429579
• See No Evil? The Role of the Directed Trustee under ERISA, 64 Tennessee Law Review 1 (1996), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1429575
  
  
  

Biography

Bobby Perez (J.D. ’90) has served as Spurs Sports & Entertainment’s (SS&E) chief legal officer and general counsel since October 2021. Perez’s duties include corporate governance, legal affairs, business development, personnel relations, soccer operations and government relations.
Perez joined the SS&E in 2013 as its senior vice president general counsel. In July 2019 he was appointed executive vice president general counsel and corporate relations.
Prior to joining SS&E, Perez was a shareholder at Shelton & Valadez P.C. served as a Bexar County Assistant Criminal District Attorney and was an elected official on the San Antonio City Council.
Perez currently serves on the USL Championship Board of Governors. He has previously served on various boards and commissions in the San Antonio Community, including Executive Board for the Greater San Antonio Chamber, Valero Alamo Bowl Board, Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, San Antonio River Authority River East Development Committee, VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority, San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Spurs Give, and other nonprofits serving our community.
He and his wife, Julie, are the parents of Christopher, Brianna and Nicholas. They are grandparents to Stella, Pia and Lion.

Biography

Afton Cavanaugh (J.D. ’13) joined the University of Baltimore School of Law faculty in 2024, following over seven years as a Service Professor of Law and Assistant Dean at the St. Mary’s University School of Law. At St. Mary’s, Cavanaugh taught a wide range of courses, including Legal Communications, Analysis, and Professionalism; Experiential Legal Analysis; Estate Planning; and Bar Prep for Credit. He also developed and implemented innovative curricula for online and in-person J.D. programs.

Prior to his academic career, Cavanaugh practiced law as co-founder and managing member of Cavanaugh Quintanilla, PLLC in Austin, Texas, where he specialized in real estate, business law and wills and estates. He also worked as an associate attorney at The Law Office of John W. Pleuthner, gaining experience in various aspects of legal practice.

He is a member of the Texas Bar and is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the Association of Academic Support Educators (AASE). He is also a member of the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal Writing Institute, where he serves as webmaster and oversees the LWI website. Cavanaugh has presented at numerous conferences on topics such as legal education innovation, diversity in law schools, and the use of technology in legal writing instruction. His research focuses on inheritance rights, tax law and legal education reform. His work has been published in journals such as the UMKC Law Review, Hofstra Law Review and The Scholar.

Periodicals

• Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards “Minimum Competency” During the 2020 Pandemic, 23 THE SCHOLAR 357 (2021).
• Rich Dad vs. Poor Dad: Why Leaving Financial Education to Parents Breeds Financial Inequality & Economic Instability, 34 CHILD. LEGAL RTS. J. 59 (2013).

Biography

Matthew B. Howard (J.D. ’13) joined the St. Mary’s University School as Law as a Practicing Adjunct Professor, discussing wrongful convictions and habeas corpus, in Spring of 2024. Howard also serves as the Director of the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit. He has been with the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney’s Office since June of 2013. He has tried several dozen misdemeanors, felonies, and is board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in Criminal Law. Howard has served in the Conviction Integrity Unit since 2015 and was appointed to the role of Director in 2021.

Howard has had an active role in the post-conviction litigation of over a dozen cases recognized by the National Registry of Exonerations. The root cause of these exonerations have including a wide range of legal issues including ineffective assistance of counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, newly discovered forensic evidence, and recantations from witnesses.

He has spoken at multiple continuing legal education events on writs of habeas corpus, root cause analysis, and post-conviction forensics. Howard has also trained new and veteran prosecutors on their ethical and legal obligations under Brady v. Maryland, Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 39.14, and the Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor under Tex. Disciplinary R. Prof’l Conduct 3.09.

Howard serves as a member of the Board of Directors with Close to Home, Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care lead agency for San Antonio and Bexar County. Howard also serves as the Program Director for the Community Courts program, a specialty diversion program for justice involved individuals experiencing homelessness in Bexar County and San Antonio.

Biography

Colin Marks, J.D., graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from the University of Houston Law Center in 2001, where he served as an associate editor on the Houston Law Review. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Harold R. DeMoss Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for two years. In the fall of 2003, Marks joined the law firm of Baker Botts, L.L.P., in Houston, Texas, where he was an associate in the trial department. At Baker Botts, Marks’ practice concentrated on commercial litigation, as well as some pro bono criminal work. Marks left Baker Botts in the summer of 2006 to join the St. Mary’s University School of Law.
At St. Mary’s, Marks was the Ernest W. Clemens Professor of Corporate & Securities Law. During his time at St. Mary’s, he served in a variety of roles including Vice Provost for Graduate Education at the University, Associate Dean of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation, Associate Dean for Graduate and Summer Programs, and the COVID-19 Law School Response Coordinator. At St. Mary’s he received a number of awards including the University Excellence Award (awarded to one faculty member per year at the University for outstanding service to the University) and the University’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Marks joined the faculty at UMKC in the fall of 2025 but continues as an Affiliate Professor at St. Mary’s. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has served as the Chair of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Contracts, on the executive committee for the AALS Section on Agency, Partnerships, LLCs and Unincorporated Associations, Co-Chair of the American Bar Association’s UCC Annual Survey, President of the Southeast Association of Law Schools (SEALS), and as the Co-chair the SEALS Scholarly Research Committee. His scholarship focuses on contract law, corporate social responsibility, business organizations and securities regulations. He is the co-author of numerous books including The Law of Business Torts and Unfair Competition: Cases, Materials and Problems, (2nd ed. West 2023) (co-author with Douglas K. Moll) and White & Summers Uniform Commercial Code, 8th edition (West Hornbook Series forthcoming) (co-author with Daniel D. Barnhizer and Wayne R. Barnes). He also has developed a coloring book for secured transaction titled Color Me Secured: Secured Transactions Activity and Coloring Book (Peter Lane Publishing 2017) (co-author with Marc L. Roark).

• Member of the American Law Institute
• President (2019-2020), Southeastern Association of Law Schools
• University Excellence Award, St. Mary’s University, 2017-2018
• Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2014-2015
• Business Law Section, UCC Annual Survey Subcommittee Co-Chair, Fall 2013-Present
• AALS Section on Contracts, Executive Committee, 2018-Present
• AALS Section on Agency, Partnerships, LLCs and Unincorporated Associations, Executive Committee, 2013-Present
• Selected for the 2010 Call for Papers on Freedom of Contract Presented by the Federalists Society and the John Templeton Foundation

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