Room 290, Stanford Law School
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
5:15 PM – 6:00PM: Reception/Registration – Law Lounge
6:00PM – 7:00PM: Presentation – Room 290

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In this year’s Morrison & Foerster Lecture in honor of Marshall L. Small, Kenneth R. Feinberg, Founder and Managing Partner of The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg, PC, will discuss the high-profile compensation plans that he has designed and administered in the wake of national tragedies, including the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill fund, One Fund Boston following the Boston Marathon bombings, and—most recently—the GM Ignition Compensation Program. These compensation programs are very rare, and are contrary to the conventional legal processes—in the courtroom with lawyers, judges, and juries—through which we typically compensate innocent victims. But in these exceptional cases, when policymakers decide there should be a “better way,” Feinberg has been called in to design compensation alternatives to resolve many of our nation’s most challenging and widely known disputes.

The Morrison & Foerster Lectureship in Law in honor of Marshall L. Small, BA ’49, JD ’51, was established in 2004 through the generosity of Morrison & Foerster LLP. The lectureship brings distinguished academics, practitioners, jurists, and regulatory officials in the field of law, economics, and business to campus so they may deliver public lectures to Stanford Law School’s faculty, students, alumni, and friends and to participate further in the intellectual life of the law school through those visits. A special emphasis of this lectureship is the area of corporate governance and practice.

Marshall L. Small has been involved for many years in developing best practices in corporate governance. This lectureship honors Mr. Small’s over 50-year career with Morrison & Foerster LLP, where he was a partner from 1961 to 1992 and has been Senior Counsel since 1993. Mr. Small is a member of the American Law Institute and served as a Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Corporate Governance Project from 1982 to its completion in 1993. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and served as a member of the Committee on Corporate Laws of the Section from 1975 to 1982. As a member and Chair of the Committee’s Subcommittee on Functions and Responsibilities of Directors, he participated in the preparation of the Committee’s original “Corporate Directors’ Guidebook” and “The Overview Committees of the Board of Directors.” Mr. Small also has lectured and written extensively in the fields of corporate and securities law. He received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law degree from Stanford Law School, where he served as Notes Editor of the Stanford Law Review and was elected to Order of the Coif. Mr. Small served as Law Clerk to Justice William O. Douglas during the 1951 Term at the U.S. Supreme Court.