About Hiro N
Hiro N Aragaki built a career at the meeting point of doctrine and practice. He trained broadly and deeply. He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Yale University, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, an M.Phil. in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Law from Cambridge. That sequence of degrees set the stage for a professional life that moves between classrooms, courtrooms and private dispute resolution panels.
Aragaki began his legal work in federal court. He served as a law clerk to the Hon. Fern M. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 1998. He joined O'Melveny & Myers LLP as an associate in 1999 and later took on a counsel role there. In 2005 he moved to Davis Polk & Wardwell as an associate. Those early years gave him experience on complex commercial matters and exposure to litigation practice at national firms.
He shifted into academia in the mid-2000s. In 2007 he joined the faculty at Fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration as an assistant professor of business law. He accepted a professorship at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles in 2011. He later spent time as a professorial research associate at SOAS University of London in 2018. In 2022 he was named Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings). His academic work has run alongside periods of practice rather than replacing them.
Parallel to teaching and research, Aragaki developed a presence as a neutral. In 2019 he began serving as an arbitrator, mediator and neutral evaluator for JAMS. That role draws on both his doctrinal grounding and his experience handling disputes at large firms and in academic settings. He is admitted to practice in New York and draws on cross-jurisdictional perspectives when handling international or multi-party matters.
His professional path combines litigation training, scholarly inquiry and hands-on dispute resolution. He moves between institutions and roles with relative ease, teaching one term and hearing cases another. He currently divides his time between academic responsibilities at UC Law San Francisco and serving on the JAMS roster, handling arbitration, mediation and neutral evaluation matters in commercial and civil disputes, and continues to teach and write on negotiation and dispute resolution.
