Jay A. Mitchell (BA ’80) was the founding director of the law school’s Organizations and Transactions Clinic. He led the clinic from its launch in the 2007 – 2008 academic year until September 2023. Under his leadership, the clinic represented a wide range of nonprofit organizations, including national and state leaders in hunger relief, the performing arts, agriculture, science education, museums, and other fields. The clinic also created a resource website, targeted to lawyers engaging in pro bono work, that contains approximately 270 forms and model legal documents for nonprofits.

Professor Mitchell’s writing focuses on intersections of law and design, including the value of bringing design sensibilities and methods to both transactional work and transactional teaching. His book Picturing Corporate Practice, an introduction to corporate work written in collaboration with a graphic designer, encourages the use of visual approaches in carrying out a variety of activities across legal practice. Professor Mitchell’s current project centers on developing a new course designed to introduce first and second year students to transactional practice, and he continues to represent several longstanding nonprofit clients.

Before joining the law school in 2007, Professor Mitchell served for nearly 15 years as chief corporate counsel and a member of the legal and finance senior management teams at Levi Strauss & Co., where he was responsible for stockholder, finance, governance, disclosure, and commercial transaction matters. Earlier in his career, Mitchell was a partner at Heller Ehrman in San Francisco, an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., and law clerk to Judge John Lewis Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.