Wagner Fellowship in Law & Business

This graduate research fellowship honors Leonard Wagner, a Wall Street professional of high integrity. Thanks to a generous grant of the Leonard Wagner Testamentary Trust, the Center for Law & Business offers a one-year graduate research fellowship to help develop future law academics with an interest in the social control of business institutions and the social responsibility of business. The Center is currently accepting applications for the Wagner Fellowship in Law & Business.

2009-2010 Wagner Fellow
David H. Webber 

David's research and teaching interests include securities and corporate law, corporate governance, shareholder rights, and class actions.  Prior to becoming a Wagner Fellow, David was an associate at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, and he clerked for the Hon. Harold A. Ackerman of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.  David graduated from NYU Law School, where he was a Notes Development Editor for the New York University Law Review and a Lawrence Lederman/Milbank Tweed Fellow in Law and Business.  He earned his B.A. from Columbia University, magna cum laude, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. 

2007-2008 Wagner Fellow
William Bunting 

William graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Carleton College in 2000.  In 2006, he received his J.D. from NYU Law School.  He is a member of the New York State Bar and is currently pursing a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.

His primary research interests are in industrial organization, with a particular focus on antitrust and regulatory policy, political economy, and contract law, with a particular focus on psychology and economics.  His recent work includes an examination of the behavioral underpinnings of the necessity defense in tort law and election-by-lot as a judicial selection mechanism. 

2005-2006 Wagner Fellow
Florencia Marotta Wurgler

Florencia's research and teaching interests include commercial law, e-commerce, contracts, corporate law, economic analysis of law, and bankruptcy. Florencia's recent research has focused on the efficiency implications of standard form contracting. She has conducted two empirical studies based on a large sample of software products' End User License Agreements (EULAs). In one paper, entitled "Are 'Pay Now, Terms Later' Contracts Really Worse for Buyers? Evidence from Software License Agreements," she examines whether sellers who engage in the increasingly common practice of disclosing their standard contract terms (EULAs) after the buyer has already purchased the product offer more restrictive terms than sellers that make their contracts available before purchase. Contrary to what critics of this form of contracting have suggested, her results show that delayed disclosure of terms does not meaningfully affect contract bias. Thus, to the extent that there are inefficiencies associated with the use of standard terms in mass contracting, they are not made worse by delaying disclosure. In a second paper, in progress, she examines the extent to which EULAs are shaped by the competitive conditions that characterize various software markets.

Florencia received a JD from the NYU School of Law in 2001 and a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. In 2003-04, Florencia was the corporate Fellow at the Center for Corporate, Securities and Financial Law and Fordham Law School, where she taught corporations. From 2001-03, she was an associate in the Corporate group at Davis Polk and Wardwell.

Her personal page is at: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~fm275/.

2004-2005 Wagner Fellow
Barak Y. Orbach

Barak has been selected as the first recipient of the Wagner Fellowship. Originally from Israel, Barak's teaching and research interests include antitrust, behavioral law and economics, corporate finance and social welfare, among many. He received his doctorate in law from Harvard Law School in 2002, where he wrote his dissertation entitled, "Essays in Legal Aspects of Competitiveness." Barak received his BA in Economics and his LLB from Tel Aviv University and his LLM from Harvard Law School.

FELLOWSHIP INFORMATION

Requirements
Applicants must hold a J.D. degree and have practiced law for 2 years. Preference is given to applicants with a research interest in the legal regulation of business and ethics, and to those who have a degree from NYU School of Law. Fellows are expected to make a full-time commitment to their graduate research at the Center.

Stipend
The Wagner Fellow will receive a stipend of $35,000 plus benefits.

How to Apply
Applicants must submit the following materials:

• Statement describing academic and research interests
• Proposal for the research project during the Fellowship year
• Curriculum Vitae
• Law School Academic Transcripts
• A letter of recommendation
• A writing sample, preferably a scholarly paper written in the past two years

Please direct all materials to William T. Allen, Director, NYU Center for Law & Business.

Our preference is for materials to be e-mailed to CLBevents@stern.nyu.edu.  You may also mail materials to NYU Center for Law & Business, KMC 9-53, 44 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012.

Please direct inquiries to Harold Jennings at hjenning@stern.nyu.edu or: (212) 998-0565.

Applications must be received by April 1st and will be reviewed by the Center's selection committee, which will make a decision by May.