Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School (AJMLS) welcomes several distinguished new adjunct faculty members this semester. Their expertise and dedication to teaching will strengthen our academic community and support the success of our students.
Professors Torris Butterfield and Professor V. Aislee Smith bring a diverse and complementary set of skills to AJMLS. Their combined expertise spans criminal defense, trial and appellate advocacy, federal income taxation, and entrepreneurial practice. The new adjunct faculty members will teach courses in Criminal Pretrial Advocacy, Criminal Trial Advocacy, and Federal Income Taxation, providing students with both a strong theoretical foundation and practical, hands-on skills essential for effective law practice.
Torris Butterfield
Adjunct Professor & CCJI Managing Director
Professor Torris Butterfield brings nearly three decades of trial and appellate experience to AJMLS, where he also serves as Managing Director of the Criminal and Civil Justice Institute (CCJI). He earned his B.A. in English from Fort Valley State College in 1993, graduating summa cum laude, and his J.D. from Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law in 1997, where he was recognized by his classmates as “The Best Person to Represent You in a Criminal Case.”
Professor Butterfield is a highly accomplished litigator, having conducted fifty felony jury trials, including twenty-four murder cases, ten of which resulted in acquittals, and hundreds of bench trials across Georgia. His appellate work includes several reported decisions in the Supreme Court of Georgia and Court of Appeals of Georgia, notably In Re: Butterfield, which reversed a trial court ruling and secured a not-guilty verdict for his client. He also successfully tried Georgia’s first Non-Consensual Pornography case, Somerville v. White.
Since 2004, he has led The Law Offices of Torris J. Butterfield & Associates, P.C., a full-service firm specializing in criminal defense, personal injury, and divorce law. Previously, he served as Senior Trial Attorney for the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office, handling major felony and complex multi-defendant cases.
He holds memberships in the State Bar of Georgia, GACDL, NACDL, the American Bar Association, and Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College. Outside of law, he enjoys reading, fishing, running, riding motorcycles, cooking, and traveling, and he and his wife Kimley have two children.
Aislee Smith
Adjunct Professor
Professor V. Aislee Smith is a proud Morehouse College alumnus with a J.D. from Howard University School of Law and an LL.M. in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center. His legal career includes serving as a tax attorney with the IRS as well as in the New York offices of Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In 2003, Smith answered the call to entrepreneurship, dedicating more than 20 years to serving the Atlanta community. Now quasi-retired, he devotes his time to teaching, speaking, and writing.
Outside of his professional pursuits, Smith is an avid golfer, an enthusiastic world traveler, and a passionate advocate for underprivileged children through his charity, Give a Child A Smile Around the World.
With the addition of these adjunct professors, AJMLS continues to provide a well-rounded legal education that blends scholarly inquiry with practical training. Professors Butterfield and Smith exemplify the law school’s commitment to preparing students not only to understand the law but to practice it with skill, confidence, and integrity. We are proud to welcome them to our community and look forward to the impact they will have on our students’ academic and professional journeys.