The Department has a long tradition of producing leading and agenda-setting scholarship in the fields of corporate law and governance, insolvency, financial law, and financial regulation. Eminent commercial lawyers who have, in the past, taught at the LSE include Lord Wright, Lord Chorley, Professor Lord Wedderburn, Professor Paul Davies QC, Professor Sarah Worthington QC. Current faculty members continue this distinguished tradition by providing academic and policy leadership in relation to the most timely and challenging legal questions raised by the financial system and by corporate law and governance.
A selection of faculty publications can be found below. Full bibliographies, details of research interests and external appointments are available for each faculty member by following the links to staff webpages.

Faculty members are routinely engaged in research projects and policy initiatives at national and international level on the most timely of questions, which underline the influence of LSE scholarship on this dynamic area of legal and regulatory reform. For example: Professor Niamh Moloney’s external appointments include acting as Special Adviser to the major 2014-15 inquiry by the UK House of Lords EU Select Committee into the EU’s regulatory response to the financial crisis, which reported in February 2015; Dr Philipp Paech is a consultant for the European Central Bank; Sarah Paterson is a member of the Executive Committee of the Secured Transactions Law Reform Project; Dr Eva Micheler is a member of the Investor Protection and Intermediaries Standing Committee at the European Securities Markets Authority; Dr Carsten Gerner-Beuerle, Edmund-Philipp Schuster and Dr Philipp Paech prepared a report on Directors’ Duties and Liabilities for the European Commission; Dr Jo Braithwaite has co-authored a Bank of England Financial Stability paper on defaults within financial market infrastructure, and Professor Michael Bridge has been a member of a wide variety of working groups and advisory bodies in the areas of secured transactions and international sale of goods law. Faculty members also embrace interdisciplinary scholarship, such as the work of Professor David Kershaw, Dr Gerner-Beuerle and Edmund-Philipp Schuster on corporate governance with LSE’s Financial Markets Group: Corporate Governance at LSE, and as evidenced by Dr Eva Micheler and Professor Julia Black’s appointments as Co-investigators and Programme Directors at the LSE Systemic Risk Centre, where Dr Jo Braithwaite is also a Research Associate

The Department regularly hosts distinguished visiting academics from institutions all over the world who are researching in the areas of corporate, financial and insolvency law, and this greatly contributes to LSE research. It also organises, together with the University of Oxford, an annual Law and Finance conference. The Department hosts the Law and Financial Markets Project which, through events and research projects, brings together academics and practitioners and enables them to exchange ideas about key aspects of financial law. Faculty from the Department of Law also work closely with other research centres and departments within LSE, for example, the LSE Systemic Research Centre and the Financial Markets Group.

An innovative and extensive teaching programme is offered in this area, which directly draws on faculty research and expertise. The Department offers a range of research-led corporate and financial law modules on our degree programmes, and several successful PhDs in this area have been completed by research students in the Department (see PhD completions). There are regular evening seminars in this area, including those specially tailored for LLM students, often focusing on topical case studies in corporate and financial law. Alumni from our degree programmes have gone on to hold senior positions in banks, law firms, financial regulators and governments worldwide, and we encourage them to come back to the Department to share their insights and expertise with staff and current students.
 

A sample of recent faculty publications in this area is set out below. Full bibliographies may be found on faculty members’ departmental webpages, and you may also wish to browse the LSE Law Working Paper series, which is published three times and year.