Law Professor Mike Murray Named 2025-2026 University Research Professor
The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees recently approved 18 University Research Professors for the 2025-2026 academic year, including Michael D. Murray, Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law.
“It is our privilege each year to recognize distinguished experts who have made significant contributions across the breadth of research fields at the University of Kentucky,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, UK’s acting vice president for research, according to an April 29 UKNow article following board approval. “Our next cohort of University Research Professors has demonstrated excellence in fields that address scientific, social, cultural and economic challenges in our region and around the world.”
Murray has taught full-time at the UK Rosenberg College of Law since 2018. He previously taught as a visiting professor.
Murray is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar in artificial intelligence and the law; art law, including blockchains, cryptocurrency, and NFTs; intellectual property law, including copyright, trademark, and right of publicity; and legal rhetoric and communication, including visual legal rhetoric. He has been invited to speak on these topics at national conferences in the United States and international conferences in Australia, Belgium, Czechia, Costa Rica, England, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, and Turkey.
“It is a great honor to be recognized by one's peers and colleagues in this way,” Murray said. “I also am happy that I achieved this distinction as a clinical professor who has taught legal research and writing and advocacy each year of the 27 years that I have been teaching full-time in the academy with no sabbaticals and no ‘light loading’ on my teaching package at any time in those 27 years.”
Murray graduated from Loyola College in Maryland and from Columbia Law School. After law school, he clerked for United States District Judge John F. Nangle of the Eastern District of Missouri, who was then the chair of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Murray also practiced commercial, intellectual property, and products liability litigation for seven years at Bryan Cave law firm in St. Louis. After leaving private practice, Murray taught at the law schools of Saint Louis University, University of Illinois, Valparaiso University, University of Michigan, and University of Massachusetts, and internationally in Florence, Italy, and Cambridge, UK.
University research professors receive a $10,000 award to further their research in the upcoming year. Murray said he was honored to become the eighth law professor at University of Kentucky to receive the designation since the program started in 1976.
“My goals are fairly straightforward,” Murray said. “My current research in AI is held back by the cost to pay research assistants and the cost to organize research studies with a large, statistically relevant population. I also have been unable to subscribe to the current cutting-edge AI platforms.”
Murray said the award will allow him to gain access to higher-level AI systems and move forward with plans for significant studies beyond the short-term pilot studies he has pursued to date.