Faculty Profile

William D. Henderson

Professor of Law and Harry T. Ice Faculty Fellow

In the News

"Going to law school? Proceed with caution"National Law Journal,  December  14,  2009

"William Henderson: Law Prof Means Business"ABA Journal,  September  1,  2009

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Biography

Professor Henderson joined the Indiana Law faculty in 2003 following a visiting appointment at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a judicial clerkship for Judge Richard Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

He teaches various business law courses, including Corporations, Business Planning, and a class on law firms as business organization.

In conjunction with other Indiana law faculty, Henderson is developing The Legal Profession, a new course which explores how different practice settings (e.g., corporate practice versus criminal defense versus government lawyers) influence the moral and ethical duties of lawyers.

Henderson's scholarship focuses on empirical analysis of the legal profession and legal education. His published work includes articles in the North Carolina Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Texas Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Stanford Law Review (forthcoming 2008). In the law firm context, he is currently examining a wide variety of market trends, including patterns of lawyer mobility, the relationship between profitability and associate satisfaction, the economic geography of large law firms, and attrition rates of female and minority attorneys. His recent legal-education work explores the relationship between labor markets and the annual U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Prior education-related projects include an innovative study which found evidence that the predictive validity of the LSAT may be partially attributable to the legal academy's heavy and under-theorized use of time-pressured exams. In addition, his 2002 analysis of the Cleveland Public Schools was the first study to utilize GIS maps for visually depicting the relationship between a school district's socioeconomic composition and students' performance on state proficiency exams.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Henderson is a research associate with the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) and director of the Law Firms Working Group, a joint initiative of the Indiana Law and the American Bar Foundation. He is also a regular contributor to the Empirical Legal Studies Blog (www.elsblog.org).

Selected Works

• The Elastic Tournament: A Second Transformation of the Big Law Firm, 60 Stan. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2008) (co-authored with Marc Galanter).
• Measuring Outcomes: Post-Graduation Measures of Success in the U.S. News & World Report Law Schools Rankings, 83 Ind. L. J. ___ (forthcoming 2008) (co-authored with Andrew Morriss).
• Young Associates in Trouble, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 1087 (2007) (book review essay and empirical study) (co-authored with David Zaring).
• Single-Tier versus Two-Tier Partnership Tracks at Am Law 200 Law Firms: Evidence and Theory, 84 N.C. L. Rev. 1691 (2006).
• Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores: Migration Patterns in the U.S. News Rankings Era, 81 Ind. L. J. 163 (2006) (co-authored with Andrew Morriss).
• From Insull to Enron: Corporate (Re)Regulation After the Rise and Fall of Two Energy Icons, 26 Energy L. J. 35 (2005) (co-authored with the Hon. Richard D. Cudahy).
• The LSAT, Law School Exams, and Meritocracy: The Surprising and Undertheorized Role of Test-Taking Speed, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 975 (2004).
• Demography and Desegregation in the Cleveland Public Schools: Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Educational Failure and Success, 26 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 457 (2002).

Related Links

• Social Science Research Network
• Curriculum Vitae
• Publications