About Edward
Edward McCaffery has built a career that bridges scholarship and practice. He arrived at Yale as an undergraduate and left summa cum laude in 1980 with a double major in Classics (Latin) and Philosophy, elected to Phi Beta Kappa and earning honors in both fields. He then took his legal training at Harvard Law School, receiving a J.D. in 1985. After several years in practice and study, he returned to the University of Southern California to complete an M.A. in Economics in 1994.
His academic career deepened at USC Gould School of Law. In 2004 he was appointed the Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Professor of Law, Economics and Political Science. He teaches courses that sit at the intersection of law and social science and mentors students across the law school. Colleagues describe his classroom as rigorous and discursive; he presses students to connect doctrinal rules to economic and political implications.
Alongside teaching, McCaffery has maintained an active role in legal practice. He serves as counsel at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. That position keeps him engaged with client work and practical problem solving. The combination of a full-time academic post and outside counsel work gives him a regular testing ground for ideas that originate in scholarship.
He is admitted to practice in California. McCaffery became a member of the bar in 1986 and remains an active member. His professional life has therefore followed two tracks: the academy and the bar. He has moved between theory and practice in ways that shape both his classroom priorities and his work for clients.
Students and peers note his interdisciplinary reach. His background in classics and philosophy informs his attention to argument and structure. His later training in economics provides tools for assessing consequences and incentives. Those strands come together in his teaching, research, and counseling.
Today he divides his time between USC Gould School of Law and his role at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. He continues to teach and publish while advising clients, and his current practice centers on advising clients on legal and policy matters.
