Rate My Professor Sonya Bonneau

Sonya G. Bonneau is Professor of Law, Legal Practice at Georgetown University Law Center, where she regularly teaches Legal Practice, upper-level writing seminars, and seminars in Art Law and Judicial Opinion Writing. She holds a B.A. in English and Art History from Cornell University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Prior to academia, Bonneau clerked for the Honorable Norman A. Mordue at the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. She practiced commercial litigation at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and at Hancock & Estabrook, LLP, including its appellate practice.

Professor Bonneau's scholarship takes a cultural approach to the law and its language, focusing on conflicts involving the arts, authorship, and free expression. Her academic interests include legal analysis, communications, rhetoric, culture, and the arts. She is co-author of the textbook Legal Writing in Context, now in its second edition (Carolina Academic Press, 2024), with Susan A. McMahon. Key publications include 'The Romantic Author as Compelled Speaker,' 97 Tul. L. Rev. 53 (2022), which received the John Minor Wisdom Award; 'Disruptive Lawyering 101,' 25 Legal Writing: J. Legal Writing Inst. 37 (2021), with McMahon; and an amicus curiae brief for art scholars and historians in Knox v. Service Employees International Union, Local 54, No. 18-949 (U.S. Mar. 6, 2019). Bonneau's work advances pedagogy and cultural perspectives in legal practice and writing.