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, the premier academic center seeking to make the civil justice system more transparent, accessible, and equitable. Beyond that, she is the author of numerous award-winning scholarly articles, the author or co-author of three casebooks, and a Reporter for two Third Restatement of Torts projects: Miscellaneous Provisions and Medical Malpractice. In 2022, the ALI awarded her the R. Ammi Cutter Reporter’s Chair for her work, one of the highest honors that organization bestows.
Professor Engstrom is an elected member of the ALI, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the California Advisory Committee on Civil Jury Instructions, a member of the Editorial Board of Foundation Press, and, from 2023-2024, served as Chair of the Section on Torts and Compensation Systems of the AALS. She is also the 2025 recipient of the William L. Prosser Award, a lifetime achievement award furnished by AALS for her outstanding contributions to tort law. She is believed to be the youngest recipient of that lifetime achievement award in its history. She is also the 2024 recipient of a lifetime achievement award furnished by the Center for Litigation and Courts at U.C. College of the Law S.F. for her outstanding contributions to ethics and complex litigation. Before joining Stanford’s faculty in 2009, Professor Engstrom was an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and a law clerk to Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1997, summa cum laude, and from Stanford Law School in 2002, with Distinction and as a member of Order of the Coif.
