Robert Lancaster joined the LSU faculty and was appointed the Director of Clinical Legal Education in Fall 2008. As Director of Clinical Legal Education, Professor Lancaster oversees experiential learning at the Law Center which includes clinics, externships, and skills courses. He teaches the Parole and Re-entry Clinic in the Fall. In the Spring, he teaches the Family Mediation Clinic, Legal Interviewing and Counseling, and Divorce and Child Custody Mediation. His professional interests are primarily focused on the pedagogy of experiential legal education, exploration of issues of mass incarceration and prisoner reentry, and alternative methods of conflict resolution in family decision making.  

Prior to LSU, he was a Clinical Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law -Indianapolis where he taught in the Civil Practice Clinic, the Judicial Externship Program, Lawyering Practice, and a course exploring wrongful convictions titled Convicting the Innocent. Professor Lancaster has also taught in the Criminal Justice Defense Clinic at the Washington School of Law, American University in Washington, D.C. and was a Cover Fellow at the Yale Law School. Prior to teaching, he represented death row inmates in state post-conviction and federal habeas proceedings.

Professor Lancaster has extensive experience living and working overseas. He spent a gap year after his college graduation living and working in Japan. He travelled throughout  the provinces of China while he was the faculty director of the China Trial Advocacy Institute (CTAI) from 2004 – 2008 — a rule of law and human rights project headquartered at Renmin University School of Law in Beijing and funded by the Bureau of Democracy, Rights and Labor of the United States Department of State. He also served as resident faculty for the China Law Summer Program and the European Law Summer Program while at Indiana University.

Professor Lancaster is a member of the Louisiana State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He serves the Louisiana State Bar Association as a member of the Access to Justice Committee and the LGBT Section of the Diversity Committee. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC-LA) and was a member of the Louisiana Public Defender Board from June 2013 through August 2016. Professor Lancaster was also a longstanding member of the Board of Governors for the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT)—a community of progressive law teachers working for justice, diversity and academic excellence.

Professor Lancaster received his BA, magna cum laude, in Philosophy (with Honors in English) from Millsaps College and his JD, cum laude, from Tulane Law School.  He is admitted to practice in Louisiana, Indiana, and Connecticut and is a Qualified Child Custody and Visitation Mediator in Louisiana.