Joseph A. Grundfest

- W. A. Franke Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus
- Senior Faculty, Rock Center for Corporate Governance
- Room C234, Crown Quadrangle
Expertise
- Administrative Law
- Banking & Financial Institutions
- Business & Corporate Law
- Capital Markets
- Complex Litigation
- Corporate Finance
- Corporate Governance
- Law & Economics
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Policy Analysis
- Private Equity
- Public Policy & Empirical Studies
- Regulatory Policy
- Securities Regulation
- Venture Capital
- White Collar Crime
Biography
Senior Faculty, Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance
Joseph A. Grundfest, JD ’78, is a nationally prominent expert on capital markets, corporate governance, and securities litigation. His scholarship has been published in the Harvard, Yale, and Stanford law reviews, and he has been recognized as one of the most influential attorneys in the United States. Professor Grundfest founded the award-winning Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which provides detailed, online information about the prosecution, defense, and settlement of federal class action securities fraud litigation. He launched Stanford Law School’s executive education programs and continues to co-direct Directors’ College, the nation’s leading venue for the continuing professional education of directors of publicly traded corporations. He is also a senior faculty member with the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance. Additionally, he co-founded Financial Engines with Professor William F. Sharpe, the 1990 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, and formerly served as a director of KKR, Inc., and of the Oracle Corp.
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1990, Professor Grundfest was a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors as counsel and senior economist for legal and regulatory matters, and was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Early in his career he was a research associate at the Brookings Institution and an economist and consultant with the RAND Corporation.
Education
- MSc Program London School of Economics 1972
- BA Yale University 1973
- JD Stanford Law School 1978
- Doctoral studies (economics) Stanford University 1975-78
Related Organizations
Courses
Affiliations & Honors
- Founder and Director, Financial Engines, Inc.
- Member, Nominating Committee of the NASDAQ Stock Market
- Honoree, National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential Lawyers," 2006
- Recipient, John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford, 1992, 2001
- Elected Member, American Law Institute
Faculty on Point | Professor Joseph A. Grundfest on Bitcoin: Is it a Security?
Key Works
News
Whopper $267 million fee award in $1 billion Dell case shows why Delaware is different
Reuters
Stanford’s Grundfest pointed out that in the Americas Mining case that Laster cited throughout his Dell decision, the Delaware Supreme Court approved a fee award of just 15% of the class recovery — and shareholders in that case litigated through trial and appeal. A dissenting justice in that decision, Grundfest…
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