Nicole M. Downing
Clinical Associate Professor of Law and the Assistant Director for Public Services
Areas of Expertise
- Legal Research
Biography
Nicole Downing is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law and the Assistant Director for Public Services at the Kathrine R. Everett Law Library. In addition to managing reference and access services for the law library, she oversees the upper-level legal research curriculum and teaches courses such as Advanced Legal Research and Transactional Law Research. Her scholarly interests include legal research pedagogy and the integration of generative AI into legal education. Her most recent article, “Using Content and Tone to Deliver Effective Feedback on Legal Research” won the 2023 AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers Award.
Professor Downing previously worked as the Reference and Instructional Services Librarian at the University of Miami Law Library. She earned her B.S. in Marketing Communication and Writing, Literature & Publishing from Emerson College. She then completed her J.D. at the University North Carolina School of Law. After law school, she earned her M.S.L.S. at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science and worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Kathrine R. Everett Law Library.
Education
- M.S., Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2014)
- J.D., Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2012)
- B.S., Marketing Comm. and Writing, Lit. & Publishing, Emerson College (2009)
Selected Publications
Using Content and Tone to Deliver Effective Feedback on Legal Research, 116 LAW LIBR. J. 159 (2024).
Lexis/Nexis | Hein | Document Link
Designing and Implementing Research Competency (with T. Tarves and A. Pal), AALL SPECTRUM, March-April 2019, at 15.
Hein | BEPress
The Five Minute Exercise: A Method for Using Modified Lectures in the Legal Research Classroom, 38 LEGAL REFERENCE SERVICES Q. 1 (2019).
Hein | BEPress | Document Link