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Michael Murphy, a legal educator with a wide range of practice experience, will join Duke Law in January as clinical professor of law and supervising attorney of the Start-Up Ventures Clinic.

Murphy is clinical supervisor and lecturer in law of the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, a position he has held since July 2018. Prior to that, he was corporate counsel at electronic trading pioneer SEI and general counsel during the startup phase of BrainDo, a digital marketing agency in Philadelphia.

A scholar of technology and legal practice and lawyer well-being, Murphy chairs the communications committee of the Clinical Legal Education Association and is an executive committee member of the Section on Balance and Well-Being in Legal Education of the Association of American Law Schools.

Clinical Professor Bryan McGann, director of the Start-Up Ventures Clinic, called Murphy “a perfect fit.

“His education and experience make Mike the perfect balance of a terrific teacher and an entrepreneur, with a history of instructing students in a similar clinic,” McGann said.

“On top of all that, Mike has an ability to combine the seriousness of our work with an appropriate levity that only a true stand-up comedian can bring. I look forward to our partnership and know that our students, our colleagues, and Duke Law School will all benefit from his skills.”

Raised in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Murphy received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Oakland University and his JD from the University of Michigan Law School. After clerking at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he began practice in the commercial litigation and labor and employment groups at Blank Rome in Philadelphia.

With some technology background from an early job writing web content, Murphy became known at the firm as an expert in electronic discovery, then in a nascent stage. In fall 2014 he began teaching a course he created on e-discovery and digital evidence at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, leading to what Murphy jokingly calls the “derailment” of his career.

“Much to my dismay as a private practitioner, I realized that while I enjoyed practice, I loved teaching,” Murphy said. “And I knew at that point that I should pivot to teaching if that’s what I wanted to do, and be patient and wait for a good opportunity.”

Murphy began to work on law review articles in the evenings. Rather than stay on the law firm partner track, he joined BrainDo as its third employee and general counsel despite having little experience with common issues facing startups such as entity formation, partnership agreements, commercial leases, and trademarking a logo.

“I wasn't the first person to leave a stable job to join a startup without too great an idea of what I was doing or how I would do it,” Murphy said. “But still, the founders of BrainDo took a chance on me. So I left Lexis and Westlaw behind and existed on Google and favors for a year. I learned how to do small business law by figuring it out through necessity, all the while very much wishing I had taken something like the Start-Up Ventures Clinic when I was in law school.”

Murphy went on from BrainDo to serve as in-house counsel at SEI Investments, a publicly-traded financial services technology company, until an opportunity opened up at the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic at Penn. There he supervises students in providing pro bono transactional legal services to social ventures, economic development projects, and community entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia area.

“If there's one thing of which I am living proof, it’s that a career path with a law degree is by no means a straight line,” Murphy said. “A lot of what we do in clinical legal education is help students figure out who they are as a professional so they can practice law their way, even if it means making a career decision that people think is crazy – and that’s okay. I've made a few of those decisions.

“Having that agency and intention in terms of carving out the career you want is something you can do, whether you're working for yourself as an entrepreneur or heading off to the biggest law firm in the world. We try to teach students to keep their eyes open and be in the right place at the right time for those opportunities, because you make your own luck in this business.”

Adapting the legal profession to a changing world

One of Murphy’s scholarly interests is the impact of technology on legal practice and ways to overcome resistance to innovation. In The Search for Clarity in an Attorney’s Duty to Google, 18 Legal Comm. & Rhetoric: JALWD 133 (2021), Murphy discusses how the obligation to investigate facts has evolved with the emergence of new technologies and proposes codifying a requirement to conduct Internet research using search engines (the “duty to Google”) in rules governing professional responsibility as part of an attorney’s basic technological competence.

In Just and Speedy: On Civil Discovery Sanctions for Luddite Lawyers, 25 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 36 (2017), Murphy argues that judges could impose civil sanctions on lawyers who refuse to adopt technology under Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which directs parties involved “to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.”

“Not adopting technology appears to be doing nothing, but is also itself a decision with risk and benefit. Sanctioning luddite attorneys increases the risk of doing nothing, which makes the avoidance of innovation less of a reasonable choice,” Murphy writes.

He also devotes considerable time to studying lawyer happiness and well-being, a topic of perennial concern for law schools and the profession, and believes that working alongside entrepreneurs in legal clinics can help law students build confidence and a healthy professional identity through exposure to a growth mindset.

It is an idea Murphy develops in a chapter titled How Working with Entrepreneurs Makes Law Students into Happier, Healthier Lawyers, Contemporary Challenges in Clinical Legal Education (forthcoming in 2023, Routledge), and it occurred to him while reading reflection papers submitted throughout the year by students in the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic.

“ELC students would refer to seeing the world the way their clients do as being really helpful in finding a place of comfort as a young professional. And it's really a mindset of becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Murphy said.

“Entrepreneurs are radical optimists. They take a leap of faith that they’ll figure out what they don't know along the way. Seeing the world through those eyes helps law students function better as attorneys, because the law changes all the time but they gain a sense that they can understand it and interpret it when they need to.

“So a clinic that gets students into a room with entrepreneurs is not just a great way to help the community and teach valuable skills, but it might actually solve a problem that law schools struggle with, which is why our students and young professionals are so much less happy than other professionals. And regardless of the causes, how do we solve it?”

Teaching resilience through comedy

Though Murphy will leave his five-year position at Penn Carey Law a semester early, the decision to relocate was driven by Duke Law’s strong programs, the warm reception from faculty and students, and the community feel of Durham. Murphy and his wife, also a lawyer, are active in pro bono and volunteer work, including dog rescue, and share their home with canine companions Little Ann, Spock and a rotating crew of foster dogs.

“To get to work with a dog person who is a successful entrepreneur and also a top-notch lawyer and faculty member was too good an opportunity to pass up,” he said of McGann, who invented Pill Pockets pet treats.

Anne Gordon, clinical professor of law and director of externships, said Murphy will bring to the clinical program energy, enthusiasm, and a strong ability to connect with students and the community.

“He is passionate about entrepreneurship as a way to achieve social mobility, and he’s able to articulate the pedagogical value of clinic work in a straightforward way that directly connects to students’ future careers as lawyers,” Gordon said.

“He’s also got a fantastic sense of humor that will be a huge asset to his students and colleagues – who sometimes need to be reminded not to take life too seriously.”

Murphy also is an avid participant in live story slams and improvisational comedy, which he said teaches lessons that can be applied in any legal discipline or negotiation. It can also help law students put their careers in perspective and weather the inevitable setbacks, and he hopes to bring to Duke a workshop or class on improvisational theater and how it can help students be better, happier lawyers.

“What I love about improv is that failure is certain. Bombing will absolutely happen because you're making the show up on the spot. It won’t always work. You’ll try to do something funny and it won’t be funny, and you'll have to figure out how to do better next time. But the stakes really are not that high if it goes bad. You feel ashamed for a minute and then you're okay,” Murphy said.

“It's very easy for law students to do a practice oral argument or a report and have something not go well and immediately assume that their career is over. Improv gets you into that growth mindset of, ‘Whatever happens I can learn from it and get better. And I'll have fun. But if it doesn't work out the way I hoped, that's okay.’

“If I have one key message for Duke Law students, it’s that it is absolutely possible to be a law student and have fun, and to be a successful lawyer and have fun. And together, we are going to figure out how.”