After leading the UNC School of Law as its interim dean for more than eight months, Andy Hessick will stay in the role.
The university announced Thursday that it selected Hessick, who has worked at the school for a decade, to be the permanent successor to Martin Brinkley after Brinkley transitioned away from the deanship in Sept. 2025.
“I’m honored and humbled to serve as dean of the School of Law,” Hessick said in the university’s release. “For over 180 years, Carolina Law has produced lawyers and leaders who serve in North Carolina and throughout the world, and it is a privilege to have the opportunity to continue that proud legacy and to guide Carolina Law into the future.”
“We are delighted to name Andy Hessick as our next dean of the School of Law,” UNC Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Magnus Egerstedt said. “He brings deep expertise in both the legal profession and legal education, along with a strong understanding of the school and its mission. His thoughtful leadership and clear vision make him exceptionally well positioned to lead its next chapter.”
Hessick arrived to the Chapel Hill school in 2016 and quickly became a member of its leadership team, as he was named associate dean in 2018. The law school said, alongside Brinkley, Hessick’s strategic leadership helped build its reputation and see it climb national rankings. The U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 rankings of “Best Graduate Schools” had the UNC School of Law at No. 18 worldwide and No. 6 among public schools — holding its position from 2025 and maintaining its highest ranking granted by the publication. Since Hessick joined the leadership team, the school has risen 27 spots in the list, according to UNC.
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Hessick’s teaching and research background focuses on federal courts, administrative law, remedies and the overall judicial process. Highlights from his associate deanship included launching a Supreme Court program to help students partner on cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and adding courses in corporate and transactional law to the School of Law’s class offerings. After receiving his doctorate in law from Yale, Hessick served as a fellow in the U.S. Solicitor General’s office and a clerk for judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He practiced litigation in Washington D.C. before transitioning to teaching, which he did at the University of Utah, Arizona State University and Boston University before coming to Carolina.
In a conversation taped during his first days as interim dean and published by the School of Law, Hessick said he believed the school had lots of “forward momentum” — not only from the rankings, but from its employment outcomes and bar passage rates. The goal, he said, is to capitalize on that.
“We have the opportunity for growth in just [about] every direction,” Hessick said. “We can attract incredible students, we can attract incredible faculty. We have the opportunity to place our students into a wider variety of jobs as more people recognize just how fantastic Carolina is. I don’t think there’s one particular area where there’s going to be growth — I think it’s going to be everywhere, there’s just opportunity all over the place.”
“Andy and I have worked so closely together these last nine years on everything that I’ve tried to do as dean to lift the school,” said Brinkley in the video. “Many people know him as the guy who works on the rankings, but it’s far, far more than that. He, unlike me, was a pro at law school. He’d been a faculty member at several different schools, he knew the strengths and weaknesses of different schools and their ways of approaching things…different ways of running a law school administration.
“I think that, frankly, his personality is one that our community is going to respond to,” Brinkley added. “It already does, but I think folks that like our alumni, who haven’t seen him quite as much…they’re going to just respond very positively to his combination of goodwill and humor — but seriousness and knowledge of how to make things happen.”
Featured photo via UNC School of Law.
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