Professor of the Practice
Director of Academic Success
410.837.6370
John and Frances Angelos Law Center, Room 513
Administrative Assistant:
Shea Roodberg
410.837.4620
Education
Ph.D., Georgetown University
J.D., Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
M.A., Teachers College, Columbia University
B.A., University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Areas of Expertise
Academic Support
Legal Discourse
Tort Law
Baffy joined the faculty in 2021 after eight years at Georgetown Law, where she was faculty director of the two-year LL.M. program. In this role, she developed a Legal English curriculum that supports international students’ acquisition of essential skills for legal academia. She also taught the flagship course in the two-year LL.M. program, for which she received the Charles Fahy Distinguished Adjunct Professor Award. Prior to her legal teaching career, Baffy taught linguistics and English as a Second Language for nine years in the United States and Hungary.
Her scholarly interests lie at the intersection of law and linguistics. Her research focuses on the discourse processes underlying law students’ socialization to law school and the legal profession, as well as discourse analysis of interactions in the courtroom and congressional hearings.
Baffy is a member of the Massachusetts bar.
Selected Publications
Books
Marta Baffy & Kirsten Schaetzel, Academic Legal Discourse and Analysis: Essential Skills for International Students Studying Law in the United States (New York: Wolters Kluwer 2020).
Articles and Essays
Marta Baffy, Doing “Being Interrupted” in Political Talk. 49 Language in Society 689-715 (2020).
Marta Baffy, Constructed Dialogue as a Resource for Promoting Students’ Socialization to Written Academic Discourse in an EAP Class, 46 Linguistics & Education33-42 (2018).
Marta Baffy, Shifting Frames to Construct a Legal English Class, 25 J. of English for Academic Purposes 58-70 (2017).
Marta Baffy & Alexandria Marsters, The Constructed Voice in Courtroom Cross-Examination, 22 Int’l J. of Speech, Language, & the Law 143-165 (2015).
Marta Baffy, 44 Language in Society 126-27 (Reviewing Ken Lau, Learning to Become a Professional in a Textually-Mediated World: A Text Oriented Study of Placement Practices (2015)).
Voting Colony off the Island
,
131 TAX NOTES 1265 (2011).
Professor of the Practice and Director of Academic Success.