Michael Hunter Schwartz
After serving eight years as the 10th Dean of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law from 2017-2025, Professor Schwartz resumed his full-time faculty role as Professor of Law.
Professor Schwartz is the author of books (three of which come with lengthy teacher’s manuals), law review papers, book chapters, and several shorter works addressing a wide variety of teaching, learning and curriculum design topics. Schwartz's books include What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard University Press 2013) and a contracts textbook, Contracts: A Context and Practice Casebook (3d ed. 2020), which was the first book in a textbook series he designed to modernize law school casebooks (which he now edits and which includes more than 25 other books).
Professor Schwartz is a national leader in law school teaching and learning. He has delivered more than 230 professional presentations about teaching and learning in law school at conferences and as invites speaker to law schools throughout the country and the world. Professor Schwartz is a Consultant to the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, and he is a member of the board of advisors for a national legal publisher and a peer-reviewed law review.
Professor Schwartz's leadership is evident in his role as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section for Part-Time and Other Alternative-Scheduled JD Programs. His previous work as Chair of the AALS Sections on Deans, Socio-Economics, Teaching Methods, and Balance in Legal Education reflects his commitment to shaping the future of legal academia. Professor Schwartz also served on the inaugural, 10-member Dean’s Advisory Board for the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Legal Education Police Practices Consortium.
In January 2024, National Jurist Magazine named Schwartz the 9th Most Influential Person in Legal Education. He was also ranked on the list in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Professor Schwartz’s Contracts course was selected by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System as “an innovative course that reflects exemplary innovative teaching.” In 2019, Schwartz was one of 30 CLEO Edge Award Honorees in the Education category, underscoring his transformative contributions to the field.
Before his deanship at McGeorge School of Law, Schwartz was dean at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law in Little Rock, Arkansas from 2013-2017. He taught at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas from 2006-2013, where he also served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the Co-Director of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning.
Professor Schwartz is the lead author of two additional forthcoming books to be published in the next few years by Harvard University Press, What the Best Law Mentors Do and What the Best Young Lawyers Do.
Representative Scholarship and Activities
Representative Books
What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard University Press 2013).
Expert Learning for Law Students (3d ed 2018).
Contracts: A Context and Practice Casebook Teacher's Manual (3d ed. forthcoming spring 2020) (first book in a casebook series I created and edit).
Teaching Law by Design for Adjuncts II (Carolina Academic Press, 2017).
Teaching Law by Design II (2016).
Representative Law Review Articles
Towards a Modality-Less Model for Excellence in Law School Teaching, 70 Syracuse L. Rev. __ (forthcoming Spring 2020).
Fifty Ways to Promote Teaching and Learning, 67 J Legal Ed. 696 (2018).
Teaching Law Students to be Self-Regulated Learners, 2003 Mich. State Det. C.L. L. Rev. 447 (Summer 2003).
Teaching Law by Design: How Learning Theory and Instructional Design Can Inform and Reform Law Teaching, 38 San Diego L. Rev. 347 (2001) reprinted in The Doctrine-Skills Divide: Legal Education's Self-Inflicted Wound (Carolina Academic Press 2017).
Representative Book Contributions
Learning Theory and Teaching Theory in Building on Best Practices (Lexis-Nexis Publishing 2015).
Engaging First-Year Law Students by Treating Them Like Colleagues in Brockmann/Pilniok (eds.), Studieneingangsphase In Der Rechtswissenschaft (Nomos Publishing House, 2014).
Representative Professional Activities
Chair of AALS Sections on Socio-Economics (2019), Deans (2018), Teaching Methods (2013), and Balance in Legal Education (2009).
Member, AALS Membership Review Committee (2019-present)
Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) Academic Curriculum Consultant (2011-2012)
Advisory Board, Carolina Academic Press
More than 200 professional presentations, including more than 75 invited talks at U.S. law schools and for non-U.S. law faculty from Chile, Georgia, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan.
