Paul Figley
Legal Rhetoric Instructor
Office: Room 129D
Phone: 202-274-4316
E-mail: pfigley@wcl.american.edu
Paul Figley joined the faculty of the Washington College of Law in the Fall of 2006. He serves as the Associate Director of the Legal Writing and Rhetoric Program. For the previous fifteen years he was Deputy Director in the U.S Department of Justice, Civil Division, Torts Branch. He previously taught Legal Research & Writing as an Adjunct Professor at the George Washington University Law School. He has given guest lectures at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Mount Holyoke College, and George Mason University. While in federal service he taught several courses annually at the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina.
During a 32-year career at Justice, Professor Figley represented the United States and its agencies in appellate and district court litigation involving torts, national security, and information law. As Torts Branch Deputy Director he worked to protect the public fisc and develop Federal Tort Claims Act jurisprudence by setting litigative priorities and supervising tort settlements. He managed over twenty attorneys and worked closely with numerous agency counsel and Assistant United States Attorneys. In 2005, he received the Civil Division Award for Dedicated Service, an honor given to six of 700 attorneys serving in the Civil Division.
Professor Figley’s expertise is in motions practice. His success in that practice is reflected in his 78 reported decisions. By way of representative sample, he recently supervised the government’s defense of tort litigation arising from Hurricane Katrina and personally represented the United States in tort litigation brought by owners of the Sudanese chemical plant President Clinton ordered destroyed.
Professor Figley graduated from Southern Methodist University School of Law in 1974, where he was Leading Articles Editor for the Journal of Air Law & Commerce. He earned his B.A., cum laude, from Franklin & Marshall College in 1971.
Currently Teaching
Degrees & Universities
- J.D., Southern Methodist University School of Law 1974
- B.A., Franklin & Marshall College 1971
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Selected Publications- Paul Figley, Teaching Novice Legal Writers to Complete Their Arguments; A Useful Metaphor, The Second Draft: Bulletin of the Legal Writing Institute (Fall 2007).
- Paul Figley, The Feres Doctrine, Dept. J. Monograph (Aug. 2004).
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Selected Works in Progress
- Paul Figley & Jay Tidmarsh, The Appropriations Clause and Federal Sovereign Immunity, (forthcoming).
