Matt Cordon

Matt Cordon is the Director of Legal Writing and A. Royce Stout Chair of Law at Baylor Law, where he has served on the faculty since 2000.

Cordon teaches in the Legal Analysis, Research, and Communications (LARC) program and has carried introductory writing instruction at Baylor for more than two decades. Over that span he has taught more than 3,200 students across more than 60 academic quarters and 90 sections. He is the author of the textbook used in his LARC courses, and he developed the Advanced Legal Research course Baylor Law has offered continuously since 2001. He also teaches litigation drafting through coursework and independent studies.

His scholarship includes two books co-authored with Professor Brandon Quarles and published by William S. Hein & Co.: Researching Texas Law (4th ed. 2019), the principal research textbook in all of Baylor Law's research courses, and Specialized Topics in Texas Legal Research (2005). With Professor Quarles he has also written book chapters on Texas practice materials and historical Texas legal information. His articles have appeared in Law Library Journal, Baylor Law Review, and The Second Draft, and he has authored essays for West's Encyclopedia of American Law, the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States, and several other reference works. He presents regularly at legal-writing and legal-research conferences and serves on editorial review and advisory boards.

Cordon has been a long-time faculty leader at Baylor University. He served as Chair of the Faculty Senate twice, in 2007-08 and 2020-21, represented the Law School on the Senate for twelve years, and has chaired or sat on more than a dozen campus-wide committees and work groups. He served as Interim Associate Dean of Baylor Law in 2023-24.

His honors include a national award for outstanding article from the American Association of Law Libraries, the Baylor University Outstanding Professor award for Scholarship among all tenure-track faculty in 2004, and the Outstanding Professor award for Teaching among tenured faculty in 2019. He has also received young alumnus awards from Central Methodist University (2006) and the College of Information at the University of North Texas (2009).

Cordon played tennis and football at Central Methodist University in Missouri and later worked as a sportswriter and sports information director. He and his wife, Jennifer, still support the Dallas Cowboys, but these are trying times. He is active in martial arts, holding black belts in Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He won a gold medal in point sparring at the 2011 AAU National Taekwondo Championships, five gold medals at International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation competitions, and five championship belts at North American Grappling Association tournaments.

Courses Taught

Advanced Legal Research, LARC 1, LARC 2, LARC 3 and LARC 5