How to Do Things with Contracts: A Transactional Perspective on the 1L Contracts Course | School of Law

Tuesday, November 11th, 2025
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Add to Calendar: Add to Calendar: 2025-11-11 16:30:00 2025-11-11 17:30:00 How to Do Things with Contracts: A Transactional Perspective on the 1L Contracts Course Event Description For some years now, Professor Avery Katz has taught first-year contracts from a client-centered perspective that emphasizes how the rules of contract law can be used to promote the purposes of individuals conducting their personal and business affairs, as opposed to a court-centered perspective that emphasizes how these rules are likely to be applied in litigated disputes. Many teachers include references to contractual planning, of course, in the course of discussing published cases or of black-letter doctrine. For example, while discussing a case in which a promise is held unenforceable due to lack of consideration, a teacher might ask whether and how the promise could be recast to be enforceable next time around. But in Professor Katz’s experience, most 1L teachers undertake such discussions only occasionally, instead spending the bulk of their time on how and why litigated cases come out the way they do, and on how not-yet-litigated hypothetical cases are likely to come out, should they ever get to court. In this lecture, and in the book project on which it is based, Professor Katz will argue that the 1L contracts curriculum should be organized around forward-looking transactional planning, and provide a model for doing that across the entire doctrinal range of the subject. Speaker Biography A widely respected authority on contracts law, Avery W. Katz has produced scholarship on topics ranging from option contracts to contractual incompleteness, contract theory, and fee shifting. He has taught courses including Contracts, Commercial Transactions, Deals, Payment Systems, Sales Transactions: Domestic and International, Secured Transactions, and Economic Reasoning and the Law. Earlier in his career, Katz held several professorships at the University of Michigan: assistant professor of economics, assistant professor of law, and professor of law. He joined Georgetown University Law Center as professor of law and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. Later, Katz served as an Olin Faculty Research fellow at Yale University, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown in 1992 and 1994, and a visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School in 1998. Katz joined the Law School faculty full-time in 2000 and served as vice dean for curriculum for 12 years, from 2006 to 2018. In this role, Katz worked closely in partnership with faculty to introduce innovative new courses and to strengthen the adjunct instructors program, including recruiting hundreds of instructors and mentoring them in the classroom. Moot Court Room School of Law School of Law America/New_York public

Event Description

For some years now, Professor Avery Katz has taught first-year contracts from a client-centered perspective that emphasizes how the rules of contract law can be used to promote the purposes of individuals conducting their personal and business affairs, as opposed to a court-centered perspective that emphasizes how these rules are likely to be applied in litigated disputes.

Many teachers include references to contractual planning, of course, in the course of discussing published cases or of black-letter doctrine. For example, while discussing a case in which a promise is held unenforceable due to lack of consideration, a teacher might ask whether and how the promise could be recast to be enforceable next time around. But in Professor Katz’s experience, most 1L teachers undertake such discussions only occasionally, instead spending the bulk of their time on how and why litigated cases come out the way they do, and on how not-yet-litigated hypothetical cases are likely to come out, should they ever get to court.

In this lecture, and in the book project on which it is based, Professor Katz will argue that the 1L contracts curriculum should be organized around forward-looking transactional planning, and provide a model for doing that across the entire doctrinal range of the subject.

Speaker Biography

A widely respected authority on contracts law, Avery W. Katz has produced scholarship on topics ranging from option contracts to contractual incompleteness, contract theory, and fee shifting. He has taught courses including Contracts, Commercial Transactions, Deals, Payment Systems, Sales Transactions: Domestic and International, Secured Transactions, and Economic Reasoning and the Law.

Earlier in his career, Katz held several professorships at the University of Michigan: assistant professor of economics, assistant professor of law, and professor of law. He joined Georgetown University Law Center as professor of law and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. Later, Katz served as an Olin Faculty Research fellow at Yale University, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown in 1992 and 1994, and a visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School in 1998.

Katz joined the Law School faculty full-time in 2000 and served as vice dean for curriculum for 12 years, from 2006 to 2018. In this role, Katz worked closely in partnership with faculty to introduce innovative new courses and to strengthen the adjunct instructors program, including recruiting hundreds of instructors and mentoring them in the classroom.

Event Location

Moot Court Room