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. Professor Mitchell now teaches a course that introduces first year and other students to corporate and transactional practice. He also serves as the Faculty Athletics Representative for the University.

Under Professor Mitchell’s leadership, the Organizations and Transactions Clinic represented a wide range of nonprofit organizations, including national and state leaders in hunger relief, the performing and visual arts, agriculture, science education, and other fields. Clinic projects included a full redesign and modernization of the contracts and other documents governing the Feeding America national network of food banks, development for Dance/USA of artist engagement templates for use by dance companies throughout the country, preparation of exhibition and other collaboration agreements for several major San Francisco museums, and governance advice and contract development for the principal farmers’ market operators in the Bay Area.

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.

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.