Michele DeStefano

Professor of Law, University of Miami; Founder and Director of LawWithoutWalls at Harvard Law School

Biography

Harvard Law School

Michele DeStefano is a Professor of Law at the University of Miami and the Founder and Director of LawWithoutWalls, a multi-disciplinary, international think-tank of over 750 lawyers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and law and business students that collaborate to solve problems and create innovations at the intersection of law, business, and technology. She is also the co-founder and co-editor of the Compliance Elliance Journal, an open access e-journal that publishes engaging authors’ works about cutting edge issues in compliance and ethics. In 2015-2016, she was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and visiting faculty lead of Harvard’s Center on the Legal Profession.

Recently recognized by the ABA as a Legal Rebel, Michele is an expert in entrepreneurship and innovation in the law. Her scholarship focuses on the growing intersections between law and business and legal innovation. Through qualitative interviews of general counsels and other professional service providers, Michele’s research investigates the impact changes in the law and business marketplace (including litigation funding, social media, public relations, regulation) will have on the legal profession and its potential for innovation. Her latest published research included over seventy interviews of general counsels and chief compliance officers of large, publicly traded corporations to analyze and assess the changing role of compliance and ethics. Currently, she is interviewing chief legal officers of publicly traded corporations and chief innovation officers of law firms for her upcoming book: Innovation Tournament in Law: Changing the Way Lawyers Collaborate.

In addition to spearheading LawWithoutWalls, Michele presents regularly on Innovation, Teaming, Collaboration/Culture Creation, Compliance and Ethics, Technology and Education, and Litigation Funding. She teaches courses on the changing legal profession, law, technology, and innovation, civil procedure, professional responsibility, and compliance and ethics. She is also Guest Faculty in Harvard Law School’s Executive Education program and Affiliated Faculty at Harvard Law School’s Center for the Legal Profession.

From 2003 to 2004, Michele clerked for Chief Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court of Massachusetts. She also worked for a year as a Special Master on a patent law case. Before attending law school, she was a Senior Marketing Manager at Levi Strauss & Company (1995-1998) and an Account Executive at Leo Burnett Advertising Company (1991-1995). Michele earned a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College and has been admitted to the Massachusetts, Minnesota, and District of Columbia bars.

Courses Taught

Read about executive education

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