Morris Ratner

Provost & Academic Dean Morris Ratner (BA, Stanford University 1988; JD, Harvard Law School 1991) manages and supports the faculty and all academic programs, including clinics, centers, academic support, career development, and the legal writing program. In addition, he manages and supports associate and assistant deans responsible for degree programs or departments (e.g., Global Programs, the LLM, MSL, and HPL degrees, and the Library), oversees the Assistant Dean of Students, and manages the classroom budget. (Provost & Dean Ratner has served in this role since 2017. In 2021, the UC Hastings Board of Directors and Chancellor & Dean reappointed him for a second term.)

Consistent with the College’s mission and strategic plan and the vision of its Chancellor & Dean, Provost & Dean Ratner’s priorities include:

• Creating a cohesive student experience from admission through graduation that prepares students for professional success;
• Adapting the curriculum to anticipate technological and other changes in the practice of law;
• Collaborating with faculty and staff to develop innovative teaching methods, courses, and co-curricular programming;
• Supporting faculty research and faculty and staff professional development;
• Integrating faculty, students, alumni, and the wider community in which UC Hastings is situated;
• Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion; and
• Fostering a culture of continuous and evidence-based self-reflection and improvement.

Provost & Dean Ratner joined the UC Hastings Faculty in 2012 after teaching at Harvard Law School as a visiting lecturer and then as a visiting assistant professor from 2009 to 2011. He teaches civil procedure, legal ethics, and the business of law practice, and produces scholarship at the intersection of those fields.

While at UC Hastings, Provost & Dean Ratner has received multiple awards for his teaching and scholarship, including Student Choice Award for Professor of the Year (twice) and the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence, as well as the Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility awarded by the AALS Section on Professional Responsibility.

Provost & Dean Ratner was a litigator at the San Francisco-based plaintiffs’ firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, where he was a partner for ten years and where he prosecuted product liability, environmental, mass personal injury, consumer, and human rights actions. Among other high-profile matters, he prosecuted and settled Holocaust-era slave labor, looted asset, dormant bank account and unpaid insurance claims against European companies, producing global settlements in those cases worth more than $7.5 billion.

Expertise

• Civil procedure
• Law practice management
• Professional responsibility & legal ethics