Background

Rob Wilcox joined USC law faculty in 1986 after practicing with Dow, Lohnes & Albertson in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta. Among his primary teaching and research interests are Professional Responsibility, Real Property, and Trusts and Estates. He has written and spoken extensively on professional ethics, and from 2003 to 2008, served as the Director of the Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough Center on Professionalism, a USC School of Law-based clearinghouse of information and research pertaining to improvement of the character, competence, and conduct of legal professionals. He is the author of South Carolina Annotated Rules of Professional Conduct (with N. Crystal) and has written a number of articles pertaining to legal ethics and professional responsibility.

Dean Wilcox serves on the Chief Justice’s Commission on the Profession, and formerly served on the South Carolina Commission on Judicial Conduct and the South Carolina Judicial Merit Selection Commission. He is a former chair of the University of South Carolina Faculty Senate, a frequent presenter at continuing legal education seminars around the State of South Carolina, and a member of the Order of the Coif.

He served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2006 to 2011 and served as Dean from 2011 to 2020.

Education

• A.B. (1978) Duke
• J.D. (1981) University of South Carolina

Teaching

• Problems in Professional Responsibility (LAWS 554)

Scholarship

• Annotated South Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct (with N. Crystal) (S.C. Bar, 2000).
• “Enforcing Lawyer Non-Competition Agreements While Maintaining the Profession: The Role of Conflict of Interest Principles,” 84 Minn. L. Rev. 915 (2000) [SSRN]
• South Carolina Legal Ethics (with N. Crystal) (an electronic narrative published on-line as part of the American Legal Ethics Library of Cornell University, 2000).
• South Carolina Legal Ethics, (S.C. Bar 1992, rev. ed. 1996).
• “Courtroom or soapbox? — observations on the role of law in vindicating reputation,” 24 Creighton L. Rev. 99 (1990).