An accomplished clinical teacher and litigator, William Koski (PhD ’03) is the founder and director of the law school’s Youth and Education Law Project (YELP). He has also taught multidisciplinary graduate seminars and courses in educational law and policy.

Professor Koski and YELP have represented hundreds of children, youth, and families in special education, student discipline, and other educational rights matters. Professor Koski has also served as lead counsel or co-counsel in several path-breaking complex school reform litigations including Robles-Wong v. California, that sought to reform the public school finance system in the state and Emma C. v. Eastin, that has restructured the special education service delivery system in a Bay Area school district and revamped the California Department of Education’s special education monitoring system; and Smith v. Berkeley Unified School District, that successfully reformed the school discipline policies in Berkeley, California.

Reflecting his multidisciplinary background as a lawyer and social scientist, Professor Koski’s scholarly work has focused on the related issues of educational accountability, equity and adequacy; the politics of educational policy reform; teacher employment policies; and special education law and policy.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2001, Professor Koski was a lecturer in law at Stanford, a supervising attorney at the law school’s East Palo Alto Community Law Project and was an associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Koski also holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Analysis from the Stanford Graduate School of Education.