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Everything written by Renee Knake Jefferson on law, economics, and more

Renee Knake Jefferson

Renee Knake Jefferson holds the Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center.  Prior to joining the University of Houston faculty in 2016, Jefferson held the Foster Swift Professorship of Legal Ethics and was co-director of the Frank J. Kelley Institute of Ethics and the Legal Profession at Michigan State University College of Law.

Before her academic career, Professor Jefferson practiced law at Mayer Brown in Chicago and Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Virginia, where she specialized in commercial litigation, telecommunications, and labor/employment law. She also worked as an assistant city attorney for Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 2015, Jefferson was a scholar-in-residence at Stanford Law School's Center on the Legal Profession and a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation. In 2019, she held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Australia.

She earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Posts

Renee Newman Knake on Corporations, the Delivery of Legal Services, and the First Amendment Part II

Renee Knake Jefferson Sep 20, 2011

In Part I of this post, I identified a jurisprudential thread of cases that suggest corporations have a First Amendment right to own and invest in law practices for the delivery legal services.  These decisions include NAACP v. Button, the union trilogy, and Bates v. State Bar of Arizona.  Two recent cases shed light on ... Renee Newman Knake on Corporations, the Delivery of Legal Services, and the First Amendment Part II

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Renee Newman Knake on Corporations, the Delivery of Legal Services, and the First Amendment Part I

Renee Knake Jefferson Sep 19, 2011

Last month the New York Times ran an editorial with the headline “Addressing the Justice Gap,” observing that “the poor need representation and thousands of law graduates need work.”  The piece proposed several solutions, but notably absent was the reform most likely to deliver legal services to those in need and to create jobs for ... Renee Newman Knake on Corporations, the Delivery of Legal Services, and the First Amendment Part I

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