Lawrence Hamermesh

Executive Director, Institute for Law & Economics; Professor Emeritus, Widener University Delaware Law School

(Senior Special Counsel, Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Corporation Finance, 2010–2011)

Professor Hamermesh received a B.A. from Haverford College in 1973, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1976. Professor Hamermesh practiced law with Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, Wilmington, Delaware, as an associate from 1976–84, and as a partner from 1985–94. Professor Hamermesh joined the faculty at Delaware Law School in 1994, where he served as the Ruby R. Vale Professor of Corporate and Business Law from 2005-2017, teaching and writing in the areas of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation, business organizations, and professional responsibility. Since 1995, Professor Hamermesh has been a member of the Council of the Corporation Law Section of the Delaware State Bar Association, which is responsible for the annual review and modernization of the Delaware General Corporation Law, and served as Chair of the Council from 2002 to 2004. In 2002 and 2003, he also served as the Reporter for the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Corporate Responsibility. From 2013 through 2020, he was the Reporter for the American Bar Association Business Law Section’s Corporate Laws Committee, which supervises the drafting of the Model Business Corporation Act. He is a member of the American Law Institute and has been appointed as an adviser to the project to prepare the Restatement of the Law, Corporate Governance. Professor Hamermesh also served as chair of the Board of Directors of the Music School of Delaware from 2018 to 2020.