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Gillian Hadfield

Professor

Faculty of Law

Orcid identifier0000-0003-4124-8187
  • Professor
    Faculty of Law
  • 416-978-4214 (Work)
  • University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Toronto, Jackman Law Building, Room J440, 78 Queen's Park, M5S 2C5, Canada

BIO

Gillian Hadfield is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society, Professor of Law, and Professor of Strategic Management. She is also Director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Her research is focused on innovative design for legal and dispute resolution systems in advanced and developing market economies; governance for artificial intelligence (AI); the markets for law, lawyers, and dispute resolution; and contract law and theory. She teaches Contracts; Problems in Legal Design; Legal Design Lab, and Responsible AI.

Prior to rejoining the University of Toronto in 2018, Professor Hadfield was the Richard L. and Antoinette Schamoi Kirtland Professor of Law and Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California from 2001 to 2018. She began her teaching career at the University of California Berkeley and was previously on the University of Toronto Faculty of Law from 1995-2000. Her book Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Professor Hadfield served as clerk to Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. She was the Daniel R. Fischel and Sylvia M. Neil Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago (Fall 2016), the Eli Goldston Visiting Professor (Spring 2012) and the Sidley Austin Visiting Professor (Winter 2010) at Harvard Law School, and the Justin W. D'Atri Visiting Professor of Law, Business and Society at Columbia Law School (Fall 2008.) She was a 2006-07 and 2010-11 fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1993. She also has held Olin Fellowships at Columbia Law School, Cornell Law School, and USC and is a member of the Comparative Law and Economics Forum. She is past president of the Canadian Law and Economics Association and a former director of the American Law and Economics Association and the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics and a member of the American Law Institute. She is on the editorial committee for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science and previously served on the editorial boards for Law and Social Inquiry and the University of Toronto Law Journal.

Professor Hadfield is a Senior Policy Advisor for OpenAI in San Francisco, and an advisor to courts and several organizations and technology companies engaged in innovating new ways to make law and policy smarter, more accessible, and more responsive to technology and artificial intelligence, including the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, LegalZoom, and Responsive Law. She was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Future Council for Agile Governance and co-curated their Transformation Map for Justice and Legal Infrastructure; she previously served on the Forum’s Future Council for Technology, Values and Policy and Global Agenda Council for Justice; and was a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on the Future of Legal Education, and the Dubai Courts of the Future Forum.

Media availability: TV, Radio, Print/Online

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society
    University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada2019 - present
  • Director
    University of Toronto, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, Toronto, Canada2019 - present
  • Professor of Law
    University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Toronto, Canada2018 - present
  • Professor of Strategic Management
    University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2018 - present
  • Faculty Affiliate
    Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, Ontario2018 - present
  • Faculty Affiliate
    University of California, Berkeley, Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, Berkeley, United States2017 - present

NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Senior Policy Advisor
    OPENAI, San Francisco, United States2018 - 31 Oct 2023
  • Program Committee Member
    International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence2023 - present

DEGREES

  • PhD
    Stanford University, Stanford, United States1990
  • JD (with Distinction)
    Stanford University, Stanford, United States1988
  • BA (Hons) (Medal in Economics)
    Queen's University, Kingston, Canada1983

AVAILABILITY

  • Media enquiries

INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

  • Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI)