Michael Maslanka
Michael P. Maslanka is an Assistant Professor of Law. He practiced law from 1981 until he joined the faculty in July 2015. He was Chair of the Labor and Employment section of a large Dallas firm, and was the managing partner of the Dallas office of two national law firms prior to July 2015. He began his legal career in Houston as a Trial Attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. He teaches Employment Law, Employment Discrimination Law, Effective Oral Communication, Professional Responsibility, International Law, and Civil Rights. His research interests include litigation, employment law and professional responsibility.
He is the co-author or “Learning Employment Law” (West Academic 2019) and co-author of “Experiencing Employment Discrimination Law” (West Academic, January 2021). He is the author of a treatise on employment law, “Maslanka’s Texas Field Guide to Employment Law: FLSA, FMLA, ADA, Texas Labor Code “and the Fifth Edition will be published in January 2021 by Full Court Press, formerly published by American Lawyer Media. He is the author of “Let Me Ask You This”: Techniques and Strategies In Deposing”, published by The Revie of Litigation, a student edited law review of the University of Texas School of Law (Spring 2019) as well as “Back to the Future: A Proposal To Teach Students How To Think Like Lawyers”, published by the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law On Line Journal, Summer 2019.
His newest article is “Employment Law in a Multiracial and Multicultural America: The Roles of Title VII and Section 1981” to be published in January 2021 by “Accessible Law” a student edited law journal of the UNT Dallas School of Law that is designed to assist and educate the public and lawyers on relevant legal issues. In that vein, Professor Maslanka writes a monthly column for “Texas Lawyer”, a publication that is read across Texas called “Work Matters” and seeks to educate the public and lawyers in general about issues effecting the workplace, professionalism, and, most recently, a number of articles on Covid-19 and its effect on the legal profession and the general public.
He is also the Editor-in-Chief of “The Texas Employment Law Letter”, a monthly publication with 3,000 subscribers across Texas and the United States that he has written every month since January 1990. The subscribers include lawyers (both those representing employers as well as employees), corporate executives and corporations, small business owners, and libraries of both universities and public entities. He also has a video blog that he performs in ---conjunction with the State Bar of Texas--- called “Mike Maslanka @ Your Desk” in which he addresses a variety of topics in short, two to four-minute videos. Both lawyers as well as the public are viewers. Professor Maslanka is actively involved in the bar and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Labor and Employment Section of the Dallas Bar Association.
He is currently serving a third term as member of the Executive Committee of the committee on Continuing Legal Education of the State Bar of Texas, which oversees the development of all courses offered by the State Bar of Texas. He is also an instructor in deposition law and techniques at the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and has been since 2010.