W. Edward “Ted" Afield

W. Edward "Ted" Afield serves as the Associate Dean for Experiential Education, Director of Clinical Programs, and the Mark and Evelyn Trammell Clinical Professor at Georgia State University College of Law. In these roles, he oversees the program of experiential learning at the College of Law and specifically directs the Philip C. Cook Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, one of the the College’s seven legal clinics and one of the largest and most active low-income taxpayer clinics in the nation.

Afield joined the Georgia State faculty after serving as an associate professor of law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Ave Maria School of Law.  Before his academic career, he practiced law in his hometown of Tampa, Florida, with the firms Fowler White Boggs Banker PA (now Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC) and Barnett, Bolt, Kirkwood, Long & McBride (now Gunster). He also clerked for Judge Charles R. Wilson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Afield’s scholarship and research interests focus on tax compliance, professional regulation, and the intersection of tax law with religion. His scholarship also includes policy research on state and federal tax issues impacting educational policy and doctrinal research on tax procedure. His work has been published in journals such as the Tax Law Review, Florida Tax Review, The Tax Lawyer, Villanova Law Review, South Carolina Law Review, and Nevada Law Journal.

At Georgia State, Afield’s teaching responsibilities primarily center around his work directing the Philip C. Cook Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, where he manages a caseload of 160-200 active tax controversy cases with the help of student attorneys and two other full-time clinical faculty and staff attorneys. In addition to his work in the clinic, his teaching portfolio includes Basic Federal Income Taxation, Corporate Taxation, Partnership Taxation, and Property Law.

Afield is a member of the American College of Tax Counsel and served a three-year term on the IRS Advisory Council from 2020-2022. He is also a past-chair of the Teaching Methods Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Afield holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and an articles editor on the Columbia Business Law Review. He earned an LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Florida Levin College of Law and an A.B. in History, cum laude, from Harvard College, where he was a sabre fencer for the Harvard Varsity Fencing Team and a tenor in the Harvard University Choir.