Texas Tech University

Eric A. Chiappinelli

Frank McDonald Endowed Professor of Law, 2012

Email: eric.chiappinelli@ttu.edu

Phone: (806) 834-8274

Professor Chiappinelli is a nationally recognized expert in corporate law and legal education. He currently teaches Contracts, Business Entities, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Securities Regulation. He has also taught Nonprofit Organizations, Corporate Governance, Corporate Finance, and Civil Procedure. Over his career he has won five teaching awards voted on by students and has received the President's Excellence in Teaching Award. Professor Chiappinelli is the sole author of one of the leading casebooks on business entities (4th edition 2018), which has been used at over 25 law schools.

For over ten years, Professor Chiappinelli has been an Elected Member of the American Law Institute, an honor accorded to fewer than 1% of all lawyers in the United States. The ALI, which comprises practicing lawyers, judges, and law professors, is the leading independent organization producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law.

Professor Chiappinelli has published numerous law review articles. His scholarship has been cited by other academics in dozens of law review articles and treatises, by judges of the most influential business courts in the United States, and by the SEC. He has been frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal both for his corporate law expertise and as an expert on legal education. His current research interests include Delaware corporate law, family business dysfunction, and the economics of legal education.

During the 2012-2013 year, Professor Chiappinelli was a visiting professor here at Texas Tech. He is proud to be the Frank McDonald Endowed Professor of Law since joining the faculty permanently in 2013. Prior to coming to Texas Tech, he was the dean of the School of Law at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He began his academic career at Seattle University School of Law where he was a professor of law and an associate dean. He has been a visiting professor at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Fellow of the A.A. Berle Center for Corporations, Law & Society at Seattle University.

Before entering academia Professor Chiappinelli served as a law clerk for a judge at the United States District Court in Los Angeles and for a justice of the Supreme Court of California in San Francisco. He practiced corporate law in Los Angeles with Munger, Tolles, & Olson and with Jones Day. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the State Bar of California (inactive).

Click here to read more about Professor Chiappinelli's background and his approach to teaching.

#beastmode

Education

  • B.A., Claremont McKenna College
  • J.D., Columbia University School of Law

Courses

  • Business Entities
  • Contracts
  • Advanced Business Entities
  • Securities Regulation

Selected Publications

Cases and Materials on Business Entities (4th edition 2018).

Just Like Pulling Teeth: How Dental Education's Crisis Shows the Way Forward for Law Schools, 48 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1 (2017).

How Delaware's Corporate Law Monopoly was Nearly Destroyed, 65 DePaul L. Rev. 1 (2015).

The Underappreciated Importance of Personal Jurisdiction in Delaware's Success, 63 DePaul L. Rev. 911 (2014).

The Myth of Director Consent: After Shaffer, Beyond Nicastro, 37 Del. J. Corp. L. 783 (2013).

For more of Professor Chiappinelli's scholarship, click here.

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