Professor Pedro A. Malavet

Contact Information

  • Pedro A. Malavet
    • Professor of Law
    • The University of Florida
      Fredric G. Levin College of Law
      P.O. Box 117625
      Gainesville, FL 32611-7625
  • Physical Address
    • The University of Florida
      Fredric G. Levin College of Law
      309 Village Drive
      Gainesville, FL 32611
  • Office: Holland Hall Room 337
  • Social Media

Office Hours

  • Fall 2024
    • General:
      • Monday & Tuesday, 2:45 to 3:45 p.m.
      • Wednesday, Noon to 1:00 p.m.
      • Holland Hall 337
      • (ZOOM available upon request if you have to be off-campus)
    • By appointment in Holland Hall 337 or ZOOM.

 

Class Hours (Teaching Schedule)

Fall 2024:

Law 6750: Professional Responsibility

Class Number 13546 (Section 03HG)

  • Meets Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, 1:45 p.m. to 2:40 p.m.
  • Holland Hall Room 345

Class Number 29651 (Section PRPM)

  • Meets Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, 5:15 p.m. to 6:10 p.m.
  • Holland Hall Room 285B

Professional Profile

  • EDUCATION
    • B.B.A., Emory University (1984);
    • J.D., magna cum laude, Georgetown University Law Center (1987);
    • L.L.M., Future Law Professor Fellow, Georgetown University Law Center (1995).
  • TEACHING
    • Current teaching assignment: Professional Responsibility.
      Generally: Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, Civil Code Institutions Seminar, Evidence, Introduction to Law, Professional Responsibility, U.S. Territorial Possessions Seminar. Also active in several international programs.
  • RESEARCH & SCHOLARSHIP
  • SELECTED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
    • Member of the American Law Institute (elected September 2009);
    • American Society of Comparative Law: Director of UF Levin College of Law Sponsor Membership (since July 2010);
    • University of Florida Chapter, Order of the Coif, President (2006-Present) (head of the UF chapter of the national law school honor society; our principal duty is to select new members to the chapter from among our most recent graduates);
    • Association of American Law Schools: Membership Review Committee (2007-2009) (have also served on membership and sabbatical visiting site teams).
  • LEGAL WORK EXPERIENCE
    • Junior Partner, working on civil and criminal litigation, at Bufete Malavet & Ayoroa in Ponce, Puerto Rico;
    • Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico;
    • Judicial law clerk to the Honorable Raymond L. Acosta of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico.

Presentation on Race Matters in the News
for the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations

The Latina and Latino-Americans: The Demographic Realities and
Racialized Identities of Hispanics in the United States

Click the images below to view the video of the entire presentation
(a new window will open)

Brief Professional Biography

  • Professor Malavet graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1987. He then clerked for the Honorable Raymond L. Acosta of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico from 1987 to 1989. After his clerkship, he worked as a Junior Partner in the Bufete Malavet & Ayoroa, a small firm that specialized in litigation. He started teaching at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico Law School. He returned to Georgetown in 1993 to complete a Masters Degree in law and was offered the Future Law Professor Fellowship, which allowed him to study, co-teach a course with a member of the Georgetown faculty and to develop a scholarly article. After completing the fellowship and the LLM in late 1994, he joined the UF Levin College of Law faculty in the summer of 1995. He was a visiting professor at Seattle University School of Law during the 2004-5 academic year.
  • Professor Malavet has taught Civil Procedure, but he now teaches Evidence as his large enrollment course. He has regularly taught Comparative Law courses, including a general overview of the comparative method, a specialized seminar on the civil code, and comparative procedure for J.D. students. He headed the LLM in Comparative Law program at the Levin College of Law from the fall of 2011 until the spring of 2016, after having served as Associate Director during the 2010-11 academic year, and he taught the Introduction to U.S. Law courses for the LL.M. students and supervised their Directed Research projects during that period. Malavet has occasionally taught a seminar on the U.S. Territorial Possessions and participated in the College of Law’s summer programs in France and in Costa Rica and been a visiting exchange professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He has also taught Introduction to U.S. Law to international practitioners here at the college, in several Brazilian states and online in the MOOC the Global Student’s Introduction to the Law of the United States that reached over 25,000 students.
  • Professor Malavet served on the Membership Review Committee of the Association of American Law Schools from 2007 to 2009 (the committee “examines law school applications for membership in the Association and sabbatical evaluation reports of member law schools[; and] makes recommendations to the Executive Committee on the actions it should take.”). The AALS works with the American Bar Association during its re-accreditation process and Malavet has served on both AALS membership and joint ABA-AALS sabbatical site-visit re-accreditation teams.
  • Professor Malavet’s scholarship has focused on Comparative Law, especially the civil code and notarial transactions. He has also written about critical race theory and the legal treatment of Latinas/os in the United States “proper” as well as in its territorial possessions, and on the intersections of race, culture and citizenship.

Notice of Fair Use

No private legal services offered or intended

This is an educational web site. It is intended for use by my students at the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law. It is also generally intended for use by students and faculty, even those from other educational institutions.

However, I am a full-time law professor, not a practicing attorney. I will not provide legal advice of any kind in response to private inquiries generated by public access to the website.

I cannot control access to this page by anyone outside law student and faculty groups. However, this page is not intended to solicit private legal inquiries or to provide legal counsel. I urge anyone who accesses my page while conducting legal research to seek the advice of competent counsel duly admitted to practice in your jurisdiction.

The material posted here is a small part of the three-year legal education of highly-skilled students. The course materials are accompanied by thousands of pages of case, statute, rule and other readings as well as by hundreds of hours of class. It is foolish, indeed reckless, to believe that just because you can Google the materials you can also understand them as they are intended without the assistance of competent counsel duly admitted to practice in your jurisdiction.

Finally, this is not a private research service. I will not reply to requests for information from anyone other than students and faculty seeking educational advice. I will answer bona fide news media and governmental requests that are within my areas of expertise, to the extent that this is consistent with my other obligations. Media inquiries must be initially directed to the College of Law Office of Communications.