The University of New Mexico School of Law has welcomed two new full-time faculty members including Assistant Professor of Law Paul Figueroa and Visiting Professor of Law Patrick Parenteau.

“We are very pleased to have Professors Figueroa and Parenteau join our law school faculty," says School of Law Dean Sergio Pareja. "The combined experience they bring to the school is exciting. I am grateful for the work our full faculty continues to do in attracting new faculty to the law school.” 

Assistant Professor Paul Figueroa

Assistant Professor Paul Figueroa brings extensive private and public sector practice experience to the classroom. He served as a foreign service officer and general counsel for the U.S. Agency for the International Development in Guatemala, managing a diverse portfolio of legal issues related to their $150 million foreign assistance budget. Prior to that appointment, Professor Figueroa worked as an attorney adviser to various regional and technical bureaus at the USAID/Washington office. He served for five years as the chair to the Fund Council Group on Intellectual Property for the Consultative Group of International Research Centers to ensure responsible management of intellectual property assets. During his ten years of government service, he received several prestigious agency-wide awards related to strategic innovation in legal practice and institutional climate. In the private sector, he served as manager for the Customs and Trade Compliance Group at Deloitte Consulting LLP in Chicago and as a senior associate in the Washington, DC office of New York City-based Grunfeld Desiderio, where he represented foreign corporations involved in trade disputes and won over 90 percent of appeals before the U.S. Court of International Trade. Professor Figueroa graduated from Beloit College and holds a J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law.

Professor Patrick Parenteau

Professor Patrick Parenteau is a Visiting Professor of Law teaching the Endangered Species Seminar and delivering a series of public lectures in the spring 2019 term.  Professor Parenteau has been involved in drafting, litigating, implementing, teaching, and writing about environmental law and policy for over four decades. He is a Fellow in the American College of Environmental Lawyers; the recipient of the Kerry Rydberg Award for excellence in public interest environmental law; and the National Wildlife Federation’s Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award. Most recently he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University College in Cork Ireland. Professor Parenteau graduated from Regis College, Creighton University, J.D., and received his L.L.M. from George Washington University.