Monika Ehrman

Monika U. Ehrman is on leave in AY2022–2023. She is currently visiting SMU Dedman School of Law as the Charles J. and Inez Wright Murray Distinguished Visiting Professor. She joined the UNT Dallas College of Law faculty as Associate Professor of Law in Fall 2021. Prior to joining UNT Dallas, she was a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she led the Oil & Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy (ONE) Program and served as the Faculty Director of the ONE Center. While at OU, she taught in the J.D. and graduate programs at OU Law and in the Executive Energy Management Program at the OU Price College of Business. Her scholarly interests are in the areas of property, natural resources, energy, and environmental law & policy. She is principal investigator of a multi-year team grant awarded in November 2021 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the impact of the clean energy transition on Native American communities. She is also researching the mischaracterization of natural resources in property law and currently writing on atmospheric modification, mining & wildfire policy.

Her teaching courses include: Property, Water Law, Real Estate Transactions, Remedies, Oil & Gas Law, Energy Law, and other natural resources and environmental courses.

Prior to teaching, she served as general counsel of a privately-held oil & gas company in Dallas; senior counsel with Pioneer Natural Resources; and associate attorney at Locke Lord LLP. Her practice experience includes energy litigation and transactional work. Before law school, Professor Ehrman worked as a petroleum engineer in the upstream, midstream, and pipeline sectors of the energy industry. In addition to her experience with the technical aspects of the industry, she also worked as an analyst in the areas of commodity risk management and energy trading. She recently served as Treasurer and on the Executive Committee for the Foundation of Natural Resources and Energy Law. And she sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of World Energy Law & Business (published by Oxford University Press). 

Professor Ehrman is a co-author of the leading casebook, CASES AND MATERIALS ON OIL AND GAS LAW (West Academic, 8th ed. 2022). She has published law review articles in top-ranking journals such as UC Irvine Law Review, Utah Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc, and Houston Law Review.

Professor Ehrman received her Master’s in Law from Yale Law School; J.D. from SMU Dedman School of Law; and B.Sc. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Alberta. During law school, she was Research Assistant for the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy.