Biography
Nora Freeman Engstrom is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. A nationally recognized authority on tort law, professional responsibility, and complex litigation, she also co-directs the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, one of the most influential academic centers devoted to the study of ethics and the profession in the United States. Beyond that, she is the author of numerous award-winning scholarly articles, the co-author of a leading legal ethics textbook, the co-author of a classic torts textbook, and a Reporter for two Third Restatement of Torts projects: Miscellaneous Provisions and Medical Malpractice. In 2022, the American Law Institute awarded her the R. Ammi Cutter Reporter’s Chair for her work on the Restatement, one of the highest honors that organization bestows.
Her most recent work proceeds along two tracks. The first examines the roots of the access-to-justice crisis. Work in this vein (all with a co-author or co-authors) includes: The Making of the A2J Crisis, 75 Stan. L. Rev. Online (forthcoming, 2024), and Auto Clubs and the Lost Origins of the Access-to-Justice Crisis, 134 Yale L.J. (forthcoming, 2024). The second interrogates the pervasive secrecy that envelopes a civil litigation system, ostensibly committed to open courts. Pieces include: Secrecy by Stipulation, 74 Duke L.J. (forthcoming, 2024), and Shedding Light on Secret Settlements: An Empirical Study of California’s STAND Act, 91 Chi. L. Rev. (forthcoming, 2024).
Before joining Stanford’s faculty in 2009, Professor Engstrom was a litigator at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP. Before that, she was a law clerk to then-Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She also worked at the Department of Justice where she focused on international terrorism and was awarded the Attorney General’s Award for Superior Service. She earned her J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School, where she graduated with distinction and was elected to the Order of the Coif. She earned her B.A. from Dartmouth College, summa cum laude.
