As companies stay private longer and private capital plays a larger role in financing growth, some of the most consequential issues in business and governance are now emerging outside the public markets. To help bring greater clarity, rigor, and practical insight to this critical part of modern finance, Stanford Law School has launched the Private Capital Initiative, a new program at the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance.

The initiative is bringing together investors, lawyers, regulators, policymakers, and scholars to study how private companies are funded, governed, and regulated—and to tackle questions involving disclosure, valuation, liquidity, conflicts of interest, and investor protection.

Robert Bartlett, W. A. Franke Professor of Law and Business and faculty co-director of the Rock Center, is serving as the initiative’s faculty director, and Scott James, a longtime venture capital lawyer and executive, is the founding executive director.

“Private capital has helped build some of the most important companies and technologies of our time, but it is also increasingly opaque, complex, and consequential in ways we do not yet measure well or fully understand,” Bartlett says.

Believed to be the first law school program devoted to the private capital ecosystem, the initiative is pursuing research, convenings, executive education, and governance and policy projects aimed at making private markets more transparent and trustworthy. SL