Subsequently, he was a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Fortunato P. Benavides, and worked for the law firm Weil Gotshal in their office in Dallas.[1] Fairman became a professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law in 2000.[1] He specialized in areas of freedom of speech and word taboo,[2] and earned a reputation as an expert on the subject of legal ethics.[3][4]