Faculty
Bryan McGann, Director of the Law & Entrepreneurship Program
Bryan McGann is a clinical professor of law and also serves as director of the Start-Up Ventures Clinic. McGann is of-counsel to the Smith Anderson firm in Raleigh, an entrepreneur in residence at the University of North Carolina, and a contributor to the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network. He is also the inventor and founder of the Pill Pockets® brand pet treats, the world’s leading medicine delivery aid for animals.
James Cox, Faculty Director
James D. Cox is the Brainerd Currie Professor of Law at Duke Law School where he specializes in the areas of corporate and securities law. Cox has published extensively in the areas of market regulation and corporate governance and has testified before the U.S. House and Senate on insider trading, class actions, and market reform issues. In 2009, he was appointed to the Bipartisan Policy Center's credit rating agency task force.
Emilie Aguirre
Emilie Aguirre is a business law scholar whose research focuses on companies pursuing both social purpose and profit. She joined the faculty of Duke Law School in June 2021 as an associate professor of law, and holds both a JD from Harvard Law and a Ph.D in Health Policy and Management from Harvard Business School and Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Stuart Benjamin
Stuart M. Benjamin is the William Van Alstyne Professor of Law at Duke Law School. He recently served as the Federal Communications Commission’s first Distinguished Scholar in Residence and spent the spring 2010 semester in Washington, D.C., working in the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning on issues relating to spectrum policy and the First Amendment.
Christopher Buccafusco
Christopher Buccafusco is the Edward & Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law. His research covers a wide range of topics and methods related to creativity, innovation, and intellectual property law. He uses novel social science experiments to explore the nature of innovation markets, and he writes about evolving issues in copyright, patent, and trademark law, including music copyright litigation, pharmaceutical patents, and protection for industrial design.
Gina-Gail Fletcher
Gina-Gail Fletcher is a scholar of complex financial instruments and market regulation. Fletcher’s current research focuses on the interplay of public regulation and private ordering in enhancing market stability and integrity. Fletcher joined the Duke Law faculty in July 2020 as Professor of Law from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law where she was an associate professor of law.
John de Figueiredo
John de Figueiredo is the Russell M. Robinson II Professor of Law, Strategy, and Economics. He studies competitive strategy, political and legal strategy, law and economics, and the management of innovation. His current work examines corporate legislative and regulatory lobbying behavior in telecommunications, health care, and other high technology industries. Prior to joining Duke Law School in 2010, he was an assoc. professor of strategic management and associate professor of law at the UCLA Anderson School.
Elisabeth D. de Fontenay
Elisabeth D. de Fontenay is Professor of Law, studying corporate law and corporate finance. She teaches Business Associations, Corporate Finance, and Private Equity & Hedge Funds, and received the law school’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014. After graduating magna cum laude with her J.D. from Harvard Law School, de Fontenay practiced as a corporate associate at Ropes & Gray in Boston, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, debt financing, and private investment funds.
Andrew Foster
Andrew Foster is a clinical professor of law and director of the Community Enterprise Clinic, and teaches non-clinical courses in community development law and other substantive areas. Prior to joining the Law School faculty, Foster practiced law with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC, where he was a founding member of the firm’s community development law team.
Paul Haagen
Paul H. Haagen is a professor of law whose scholarly interests include contracts, jurisdiction, arbitration, and sports law. He is co-director of the Duke Center for Sports and the Law and chair of Duke University’s student athlete counseling committee. He is a member of the American Law Institute and the Sports Law Reporter Advisory Board.
Kip Johnson
Kip Johnson was the founding director of the Start-Up Ventures Clinic which he co-taught during its pilot phase in the spring 2011 semester. Johnson is also a founding partner of the Morningstar Law Group in Morrisville, N.C., and an experienced securities and technology attorney.
Veronica Root Martinez
Veronica Root Martinez is a professor of law who writes about and researches issues related to professional and organizational ethics, drawing on scholarship from the areas of ethics, compliance, corporate and securities law, workplace law, and equity and inclusion. Martinez is one of the nation’s foremost experts on corporate compliance and is the nation’s leading academic expert on the role of monitors and monitorships.
Arti Rai
Arti K. Rai, the Elvin R. Latty Professor of Law at Duke Law School, is an expert in patent law, administrative law, law and the biopharmaceutical industry, and health care regulation. From 2009 to 2010, Rai served in the United States Patent and Trademark Office as Administrator of the Office of External Affairs. As such, she was the agency's chief liaison to Congress, other executive-branch agencies, and international institutions on matters of intellectual property and innovation policy.
Jeff Ward
Jeff Ward is a clinical professor of law and director of Duke’s Center on Law & Technology, which coordinates Duke’s leadership at the intersection of law and technology. Previously, Ward was director of the Start-Up Ventures Clinic, supervising attorney in the Law School’s Community Enterprise Clinic, and an associate with the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins, where he focused on M&A and capital markets transactions.