Richard W. Painter

S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law

Richard W. Painter

318 Mondale Hall
229–19th Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

612-626-9707

rpainter@umn.edu

Harvard University, B.A.
Yale Law School, J.D.

Professor Richard W. Painter received his B.A., summa cum laude, in history from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale University, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. Following law school, he clerked for Judge John T. Noonan Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and later practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City and Finn Dixon & Herling in Stamford, Connecticut.

He has served as a tenured member of the law faculty at the University of Oregon School of Law and the University of Illinois College of Law, where he was the Guy Raymond and Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Professor of Law from 2002 to 2005.

From February 2005 to July 2007, he was Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel's office, serving as the chief ethics lawyer for the President, White House employees and senior nominees to Senate-confirmed positions in the Executive Branch. He is a member of the American Law Institute and has been active in the Professional Responsibility Section of the American Bar Association.

Professor Painter has also been active in law reform efforts aimed at deterring securities fraud and improving ethics of corporate managers and lawyers. A key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, sponsored by Senator John Edwards, requiring the SEC to issue rules of professional responsibility for securities lawyers, was based on earlier proposals Professor Painter made in law review articles and to the ABA and the SEC. He has given dozens of lectures on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to law schools, bar associations, and learned societies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Painter has provided invited testimony before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate on private securities litigation and the role of attorneys in corporate governance.

Professor Painter is the author of two casebooks: Securities Litigation and Enforcement (with Margaret Sachs and Donna Nagy; West 2003; Second Edition, 2007) and Professional and Personal Responsibilities of the Lawyer (with Judge John T. Noonan Jr.; Foundation 1997; Second Edition, 2001). He has published dozens of articles, book reviews, and essays, including "Ethics and Corruption in Business and Government: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble and the Bank of the United States" (publication by the University of Chicago Law School as the 2006 Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History); "Regulatory Competition in EU Corporate Law after Inspire Art: Unbundling Delaware's Product for Europe, "2 European Co. & Financial L. Rev. 159 (with Prof. Dr. Christian Kirchner & Dr. Wulf Kaal) (2005); "Free the Lawyers: A Modest Proposal to Allow Restrictions on Future Law Practice in Settlement Agreements, "18 Georgetown J. Legal Ethics 1 (with Stephen Gillers) (2005); and "Standing Up to Wall Street, "101 Mich. L. Rev. 1512 (book review) (2003) (reviewing Arthur Levitt, Take on the Street 2002).

Recent articles and comments in symposia include "Ethics in the Age of Un-incorporation" in the University of Illinois Law Review, and "Convergence and Competition in Rules Governing Lawyers and Auditors" in the Journal of Corporation Law. His essay, "The Dubious History and Psychology of Clubs as Self Regulatory Organizations," appeared in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Occasional Paper Series in 2004.

His book, Getting the Government We Deserve: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference, will be published by Oxford University Press in late 2008.