Brandeis Spotlight: Professor Richard Nowka

Richard Nowka has been a professor at Brandeis Law since 1979. He is researching issues relating to Article 9 and Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Recent publications include a student handbook for secured transactions and articles examining the 2010 Amendments to Article 9 and consumer warranties under Article 2.

You’ve been at Brandeis since 1979. What are some of the most significant changes you’ve seen in your time here?
First of all, the building dramatically changed. When I first came, all the classrooms were in the basement of the law school, which is now the kitchen and the student lounge. Cox Lounge was the big classroom and Allen Courtroom was also used as a classroom.

When I first got here, the law school was just starting to emphasize scholarship. Scholarship was becoming an expectation of the faculty. The faculty had not been publishing books and articles regularly. Having a faculty focus on research and scholarship has been a change.

Many of us that are teachers here went to law school at about the same time. Law school teaching has been evolving in the last four or five years. There’s been more of an emphasis on skills and not just doctrine. My early teaching probably mimicked my best professors in law school. Law school education is going to change more dramatically in the future than it has in the 38 years I’ve been here.

What do you like about working in academia?
I do enjoy working with students. A lot of us came here to be primarily teachers. We wanted to teach law.

Students used to come talk to the professors frequently. It was not unusual to have a wide variety of students come talk to us daily, and that was great. When I speak with a student individually I can pinpoint particular difficulties a student might be having, plus many times, they ask really good questions — things I haven’t thought about.

Even today after class, a student asked me a question I hadn’t thought about. You enjoy seeing the students grow, but there’s also a benefit to me – I get to explore issues that I hadn’t really thought about.

Everybody can remember their law school experience. You don’t ever forget it, really. I can remember not understanding things, and very few of my generation talked to professors. I hope I can do a better job of educating my students. My education was fine, but even though you do well on an exam, you realize, ‘I’m not so sure I understood all that.’ That’s one of the things I enjoy about teaching – going back and making sure my students get a fuller and more complete understanding of the concepts.

In the practice of law, you’re concerned with your client. You’ve got to be economical in the sense that you’re billing your client for your time and so you have to be conscious of spending hours and hours on minute questions that interest you versus the product that the client really needs. As a law professor, I can explore every little nook, cranny and alley way. You have the time to do that. I think that after teaching law for this long, I’d certainly be a much better practitioner than I was coming out of law school. And that’s because I’ve been able to get in-depth on all the little things that you might have only a rudimentary understanding of as a law practitioner.

Your focus is on commercial law and secured transactions. What inspired your interest in that field?
I had done commercial work in practice, and when I was hired, I was assigned that area to teach. Basically, I was teaching commercial law courses. I taught most of them for many years. My goal was to provide my students with a better understanding of the concepts than I was able to achieve as a student.

Secured transactions, which is part of the Uniform Commercial Code, has always been a large practice area. Some of my students say, ‘The Uniform Commercial Code, it’s really awful.’ But I tell them it’s like working puzzles. There’s a way to make it all fit together. It’s right there in the statutes. You just have to figure it out, and once you figure it out, you’ve got it. You know how to do it and know how to use it for your clients. I wouldn’t call it math, but it is a process. That’s fun for me. A lot of people are going to say, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ But there are a lot of people who like it. “Code geeks” is what we call ourselves.

What do you consider a highlight of your career?
I received the Distinguished University Teacher Award. That was a great honor for me. You like to be recognized for doing what you like doing and what you hope you’re doing well. Getting tenure from the law school was great too. Not everybody gets it, and you have to work hard to get it.

One of my main mentors is (retired law school professor) Dave Leibson. He had taught in this area also. When I started here, he was super helpful to me. Right after I got here, he had a book contract with a major publisher to analyze the Uniform Commercial Code, and secured transactons is part of the Uniform Commercial Code. He asked me to co-author the book with him. Our book went through three different editions and it really became sort of the UCC Bible for practitioners in Kentucky. That was something that I greatly enjoyed doing, being co-author with him. The book really kind of put me on the map.

What might people be surprised to know about you?
I want to be a singer in a rock ’n’ roll band. I love live music. My friends would say my voice is not any good, but I know the lyrics to lots of songs.

I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, McCartney, The Who – I love all those bands.

That’s my retirement goal: learn how to play the guitar.

We were in Nashville and talking to a guitar salesperson and I told him my goal was to learn how to play the guitar. He said, ‘You know how to play the guitar. You just haven’t figured it out yet.’