On October 13, 2026, Sarah Lawsky was invested as the L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law in a ceremony at the College of Law Building. At the ceremony, Dean Jamelle Sharpe hailed Professor Lawsky for the way she has endeared herself to the faculty and the University of Illinois community. He shared a quote from her peer, Professor Lesley Wexler, who said Lawsky is “deeply committed, deeply curious and willing to keep digging and tweaking until she’s satisfied she has really addressed the problem at hand…. I’m often reminded how thrilled I am Sarah joined us: thrilled as a colleague and thrilled as a friend.”
Professor Lawsky joined the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in 2025. She studies tax law, computational law, and the intersection of the two. Her recent work focuses on the formalization of tax law. Professor Lawsky’s research arguing for using a particular nonstandard logic to formalize tax law is the conceptual foundation for the domain-specific programming language Catala, which is the project of a team of computer scientists and lawyers. Before joining the University of Illinois, Professor Lawsky taught at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, UC Irvine School of Law, and George Washington University Law School. Before entering academia, she worked as a tax lawyer for large law firms.