It was 2006 when Aspen published the First Edition of Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do. At that time, there was no market for a contract drafting textbook. Only a smattering of law schools even offered a course. Aspen and Tina decided to push forward anyhow. Their mantra was, “If we build it, they will come.”

And come they did. Professors quickly recognized the book’s groundbreaking pedagogy and the seminal role it would play in teaching contract drafting. With so few professors having transactional expertise, Tina mentored anyone who sought her help. Eventually, many in the Academy conflated Tina and the textbook. Professors stopped referring to the textbook by its title. Instead, it was Tina’s Book.

Tina joined Emory University School of Law in 2007 as its first Professor in the Practice of Law, and was the founding Executive Director of that school’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice. There, she pioneered a multi-year integrated transactional skills curriculum. During her stewardship, she transformed the nascent transactional curriculum into one that is nationally acclaimed.

In joining Emory, Tina wanted to persuade law schools to embrace the teaching of transactional skills as a core element of preparing law students for practice. She pursued that goal with fervor and quickly recruited others to join with her. Fifteen-plus years later, similar law school curricula are ubiquitous.

But Tina knew from the beginning of her efforts that the imprimatur of the American Association of Law Schools would be essential to the emerging discipline’s ultimate legitimacy and growth. So, in April 2010, she proposed to the AALS that it create a new section, the Section on Transactional Law and Skills. It took the work of many people and a petition signed by over 200 professors and deans, but the new section was created. And Tina was its first chair.

Tina has received multiple accolades. In 2012, she was awarded the prestigious Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education. In the same year, she was chosen as one of 26 professors from a nationwide search to be included in the study, What the Best Law Teachers Do. When Tina retired from teaching, Emory honored her by creating the Tina L. Stark Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills.

In 2019, the Legal Writing Institute conferred on Tina the Golden Pen Award, which honors those who “make significant contributions to the cause of better and more effective legal writing.” In announcing her award, the LWI also included this excerpt from one of the nominations:

[Tina is] a world-renowned educator—a pioneer in the field of teaching transactional law and skills. She is revered in teaching circles of legal writing and transactional drafting professors and well-respected by professors who teach transactional doctrine.

In addition to her textbook, Tina has published numerous law review articles and is the editor-in-chief and co-author of Negotiating and Drafting Contract Boilerplate.

Before becoming a full-time academic, Tina was a commercial banker at Irving Trust Company and a corporate law partner at Chadbourne & Parke LLP. At the firm, Tina had a broad-based transactional practice, including acquisitions and dispositions, recapitalizations, financing transactions, and general corporate counseling.

Tina retired from Chadbourne in 1993. For the next 14 years, through her consulting business and as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, she taught courses in transactional skills worldwide. She is now known internationally for her expertise in legal education and the teaching of transactional law and skills.

Tina graduated from Brown University with honors. After attending New York University School of Law, she clerked for Judge Jacob D. Fuchsberg of the New York State Court of Appeals.