Lance Liebman

Who is Lance Liebman?

Lance Liebman is the William S. Beinecke Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the current Director of the American Law Institute. He received his B.A. from Yale University 1962, grauduating summa cum laude, and earned a M.A. in history from Cambridge University in 1964. He graduated magna cum laude in 1967 from Harvard Law School, where he was President of the Harvard Law Review. After serving as a Law Clerk to Justice Byron White of the United States Supreme Court during the Court’s 1967 term, he spent two years working on transportation and community issues as an assistant to then New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay. He joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1970 and remained there for 21 years, becoming a full professor in 1976 and serving as associate dean from 1981 to 1984. In 1991 he moved to Columbia as the dean of the law school and as the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law. He stepped down as dean in 1996 and was named Beinecke Professor; the following year he was appointed director of the The Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia. On May 16, 1999 he was named the fifth director of the American Law Institute succeeding Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr..