William D. Henderson
Associate Professor of Law
Office: 255Phone: 812-856-1788
E-mail: wihender@indiana.edu
BA 1997, Case Western Reserve University. JD 2001, University of Chicago. Comment Editor, University of Chicago Law Review. Visiting Associate Professor, Chicago-Kent College of Law 2002-03. Clerk, Hon. Richard D. Cudahy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, 2001-02. Interim Associate, Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, Chicago, 2001.
Professor Henderson joined the Indiana Law faculty in 2003 following a visiting appointment at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a judicial clerkship for Judge Richard Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He teaches various business law courses, including Corporations, Business Planning, and a class on law firms as business organization.
In conjunction with other Indiana law faculty, Henderson is developing The Legal Profession, a new course which explores how different practice settings (e.g., corporate practice versus criminal defense versus government lawyers) influence the moral and ethical duties of lawyers.
Henderson's scholarship focuses on empirical analysis of the legal profession and legal education. His published work includes articles in the North Carolina Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Texas Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Stanford Law Review (forthcoming 2008). In the law firm context, he is currently examining a wide variety of market trends, including patterns of lawyer mobility, the relationship between profitability and associate satisfaction, the economic geography of large law firms, and attrition rates of female and minority attorneys. His recent legal-education work explores the relationship between labor markets and the annual U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Prior education-related projects include an innovative study which found evidence that the predictive validity of the LSAT may be partially attributable to the legal academy's heavy and under-theorized use of time-pressured exams. In addition, his 2002 analysis of the Cleveland Public Schools was the first study to utilize GIS maps for visually depicting the relationship between a school district's socioeconomic composition and students' performance on state proficiency exams.
In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Henderson is a research associate with the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) and director of the Law Firms Working Group, a joint initiative of the Indiana Law and the American Bar Foundation. He is also a regular contributor to the Empirical Legal Studies Blog.
View some of Professor Henderson's research at the Social Science Research Network.
Current curriculum vitae [PDF]
Selected publications
- An Empirical Study of Single-Tier versus Two-Tier Partnerships in the Am Law 200, 84 N.C. L. Rev. __ (2006).
- Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores: Migration Patterns in the U.S. News Rankings Era, 81 Ind. L. J. 163 (2006).
- From Insull to Enron: Corporate (Re)Regulation After the Rise and Fall of Two Energy Icons, 26 Energy L. J. 35 (2005).
- The LSAT, Law School Exams, and Meritocracy: The Surprising and Undertheorized Role of Test-Taking Speed, 82 Tex. L. Rev. (2004).
- Speed as a Variable on the LSAT and Law School Exams (LSAC, Research Rep. 03-03, Feb. 2004) (monograph published by the Law School Admission Council).
- Clear Sailing Agreements: A Special Form of Collusion in Class Action Settlements, 77 Tulane L. Rev. 813 (2003).
- Demography and Desegregation in the Cleveland Public Schools: Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Educational Failure and Success, 26 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 457 (2002).
- Reconciling the Juridical Links Doctrine with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Article III, Comment, 67 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1347 (2000).
You can view Professor Henderson's research at the Social Science Research Network.
Courses
- Corporations (B653)
- Business Planning (B632)
- Law Firm as a Business Organization (B573)
- The Legal Profession (B614)